


BUNKER 41

by CaptainMercy42



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Campfire, Cuddling, Destiel - Freeform, Fluff, Hair stroking, Happy Ending, Isolation, M/M, Marine Dean, Marooned, Porn Watching, Protective Gabriel, Sci-Fi, Snuggling, Sparring, area 51, beautiful nerd cas, cuddle marathon, destiel au, jiu jitsu, little bit of Sam, me caving in to my deepest desires, mention of ET sex, porn-stravaganza, practical joker dean, scientist cas, socially awkward cas, which are apparently cuddling men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainMercy42/pseuds/CaptainMercy42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Castiel Novak is giving Lieutenant Dean Winchester a simple tour of BUNKER41 when an explosion traps them both inside.  They'll get out eventually.  Some days that thought is very comforting, and other days it makes Cas a little sad (DENIAL: a lot sad).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Three Hour Tour...

**Author's Note:**

> I <3 destiel.

**[Day 1]**

There was an explosion at Area 51.  Not many people knew about it.  Even in this day in age, with all the technology and monitoring equipment encircling the globe, the American government had been careful to pay or intimidate everyone else into pointing their prying eyes away from their little desert oasis.  So aside from the poor souls on site (who mostly exploded) and a network of top-ranking officials that could be counted on two hands from the lowliest right up to the President, no one normal was aware that anything was amiss.

It was on the day of this mysterious explosion that the great Castiel Novak, PhD became sequestered in a TOP SECRET underground bunker with the notorious Lieutenant Colonel Dean Winchester.  Dr. Novak had begrudgingly been giving Colonel Winchester a tour of the bunker.  He wasn’t even sure why, but those were his orders.  While it was never exactly fun to follow orders, it was necessary.

He was in the midst of blandly describing the hydroponic system that sustained BUNKER41’s plant life when they felt a rumble in the ground and saw a flicker of the lights.  Dr. Novak turned his head quickly to see a red warning light in the corner where the wall met ceiling begin to spin lazily.  They both heard the distant thud of plastic-lined metal clicking into place followed by a hissing whoosh of air.

Lieutenant Colonel Dean Winchester was a brave man.  He was a man of action.  He was a disciplined man.  He was a hard-working man.  But most of all, he wasn’t stupid.  He knew what an explosion felt like and he knew what the bunker he was touring was made for, and he was 99% sure that he now knew exactly what a lockdown sounded like.  His brain raced through the pros and cons of the situation and promptly bailed the formality of rank and station right out of his con-laden boat.

“What the fuck just happened?”

Dr. Novak stepped lithely over to a panel in the wall and slid it open to reveal a small built-in LCD workstation.  A keyboard slid out smoothly.  He began typing away with almost robotic precision.

“There was an explosion.”  His fingers flew.  Time lapse images of a topside blast appeared on the screen.  He furrowed his brow at them for a moment, then dismissed them in favor of more typing.

“You think?”

Dr. Novak’s face remained trained on the screen, and Winchester watched as a flurry of coded text and grainy images were reflected in his very cliche brainy-nerd glasses.  Dr. Novak was a serious man with tightly set jaw, dark hair and light skin.  Only his airy, light blue eyes contrasted the tense lines of his physical makeup.  The typing paused.

“Hmm.”

The typing resumed. 

“Hmm? What is ‘hmm’?” 

Winchester’s voice was controlled and demanding.  It grated on Novak’s ears.  It was with great difficulty that he managed to ignore the colonel standing too close to him now, with the lazy red emergency light rhythmically flashing in his otherwise green eyes.  Despite the distraction he managed to concentrate on compiling, organizing and analysing a very large amount of information in a very short amount of time.  The typing continued.  Winchester watched the screen now, impressed at the flurry of data that was beginning to blur across it.  It didn’t seem promising.  Finally, Novak punched the ‘enter’ key and took a step back, eyes drifting towards a speaker on the ceiling.  A man’s voice flowed from the speaker, sounding almost human except for a stark lack of inflection.

_At 0931 an unidentified object struck Building 32 and caused an explosive reaction that triggered the lockdown of BUNKER41.  External casualties are unknown.  BUNKER 41 has sustained minimal external damage which is currently being assessed.  BUNKER 41 currently contains two living human occupants as well as six living rodents.  Emergency protocols have been implemented.  All communications will be powered-down for the following 72 hours during which a full network assessment will be run.  All air and water systems have been tested and confirmed._

“Really?  You had HAL tell me?” 

“I was not aware you were acquainted with individual who lent his voice to our reporting system.”  Novak looked almost scandalized by the low statistical probability of this coincidence.  Winchester coughed out a laugh, despite himself.

“No I don’t know - I mean, HAL.  HAL9000?  Daisy, daisy, give me your answer true?”  He was singing now his voice getting melodically lower and slower.  Novak squinted at him.

“I do not understand that reference.”

“Forget it.  But the computer’s name is HAL now.”  Winchester clapped him on the shoulder and started off towards the kitchen, which had conveniently been the first stop on their tour.

“You cannot simply name the computer.”  Novak wondered what kind of imbecile he was now spending the next 72 hours with. 

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”  Winchester stepped up to the closed doorway, and triggered the floor sensor that slid the panel open with a soothing hiss and a click.  He smirked at Novak and meandered through, humming to himself.

“That was not a response to your voice.”  Novak called out after him.

“I can’t hear you, Novak.  Why don’t you have HAL deliver your message to me in the kitchen?”  His mirthful voice was swallowed up by the sound of water gurgling through pipes as the plants in the greenhouse began their next cycle.

**[Day 2]**

Winchester and Novak seemed to have formed an implicit agreement that they would only speak to one another in the kitchen area. 

“Any news?”  Winchester’s slippered feet were on the table.  He was clad now in a soft pair of navy blue scrubs which were loose and comfortable, though they still held the square creases of their original packaging.  Novak was dressed similarly, though his scrubs were a lighter grey-blue and he had topped them with a boxy white lab coat.  He wrinkled his forehead.  Again.  Winchester rolled his eyes.

“Our communications are locked down for another day and a half.  I do not have access to any news source.”

“Right.  I know that.  I was just asking if everything in here is good.  We good?”

“I sent out an update at 0800.”

“Oh right, the HAL report.  I guess we’re good then.”  He began munching awkwardly on a bowl of cereal that had been softening on the table in front of him.  He swallowed.  “I just wanted to make sure there’s no chance we’re going to be stuck in here until we starve to death or run out of air or something.”

"This facility is equipped to comfortably sustain up to 40 individuals for at least 25 years.  It is far more probable that we would suffer a fatal clash of personalities than suffer any physical discomforts.”

"Well thanks, Cas.  That's just fabulous."

Dr. Novak cocked his head to the side and squinted at Colonel Winchester.  He spoke a tiny bit slower.

“Is Cas another reference?”

“Your name is Castiel, right?  So, Cas.”

He nodded.  “Okay, Dean.” 

Cas grabbed a yogurt from the refrigerator and ate it silently as he leaned on the counter, listening to Dean mush away at his cereal.

**[Day 3]**

The two men had run into each other in the gym that morning and shared a jog.  Dean had equipped himself with a portable music device, and offered no more than a friendly nod to Cas before mounting a treadmill.

As it turns out, they were both in pretty phenomenal shape, with Dean being a bit on the beefier side and Cas being more lean and sinewy.  They matched pace and eventually rhythm without realizing it.  Cas, in fact had his eyes closed.  Dean glanced over and did a double-take.  He watched Cas running blind as AC/DC pumped through his own earbuds.  His face was wrought with sweaty confusion as he wondered how the hell Cas managed to jog with his eyes closed, with no music to boot.

Cas cracked an eye open and caught Dean facing him.  Dean gave him a neighborly wave.  Cas furrowed his brow and huffed out a sigh.  He was just hitting the 45 minute mark, but he decided to skip out on the last 15 minutes and cool down by walking through the greenhouse (which was not as warm a place as it sounds).

Dean pursed his lips as his bunker-mate silently exited.

At 0915 they both approached “the bridge” from opposite directions.  Dean was in sage green scrubs this time.  Castiel was identical to before, and once again wearing his lab coat over the bunker-provided wardrobe.  Unfortunately the lab coat did nothing to dull the informality of their generic-yet-plush slippers.  They looked like the last two men standing in a psych ward.  It was an apt description of how they were feeling, as well.

“The bridge” was referred to as such because it almost resembled the cockpit of the Starship Enterprise, which was exceedingly misleading considering they were underground with no means of traveling anywhere.  This didn’t stop Dean from running to claim the chair that would belong to the captain.  He settled in, happily.

“I like this room.”

“It’s serves it’s purpose.  But it’s likely your appreciation of it will increase or decrease arbitrarily, based on the quality of the reports we are about to receive.”

“HAL! Give us some tunes.” 

The radio clicked on and began to play Metallica.

“How did you..?”  Cas tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at Dean. 

“What do you think I did all day while you played with your science?  Luckily this place has a pretty extensive media library.”

“But- you couldn’t-”  Cas inhaled deeply. “It’s very impressive that you were able to-”

Dean pulled a small, silver remote out of his pocket and grinned cheekily. 

“I didn’t, Cas. It’s not impressive.  I was just yanking your chain.”

“Ah.”  The universe once again made sense to Castiel Novak.  “You really had me going there for a moment.  Well done.”  His blue eyes twinkled with respect.

“My pleasure.  So are these tests done or what?  We going to get the network open and get out of here today?  I’ve got places to be.”  There was an edge to his voice.  Finally.  Cas was wondering how he seemed to be taking the situation so lightly.  Then again, Cas had been careful to hide his frustration as well.

Cas dialed the report countdown to the main view screen.  It appeared they had five minutes left before HAL was ready to begin letting them out.  Dean turned up the tunes and Cas endured it, thinking it only fair considering how artfully Dean had just pranked him.

 

**[Day 3 cont...]**

HAL had not cooperated.  The networks were down.  Much of the equipment topside was obliterated.  Topside scans had revealed a hasty clean-up of the blast area, followed by the immediate construction of what appeared to be dummy warehouses that resembled the original buildings, but were not being frequented by personnel.  The main problem with this reconstruction was the burial of every single BUNKER41 entrance/exit.  It wasn’t anyone’s fault, per se.  It was just an unfortunate side-effect of the instant obliteration of a TOP SECRET project and 85% of its participants. 

Cas was annoyed more than anxious.  Records of the project existed and the higher-ups would notice it eventually.  It cost millions of dollars to create, so it wasn’t easy to forget.  But in the light of the attack (or whatever it was) it was something that bureaucracy could cause them to forget for a while.

Dean was decidedly grim for the rest of the day.  In BUNKER41 Cas had access to labs and and gardening experiments and pie charts and all the other orderly, calming things he worked with on a daily basis.  Dean came from a different background.  He didn’t seem interested in science for the sake of science.  He liked practical, physical activities like sparring and target practice with any kind of weapon.  He ended up finding a game console simulator and some popular first person shooter titles.  He began a quest to conquer each one. 

 

**[Day 4]**

Dean stayed up all night playing video games.  He then slept all morning and ate his breakfast and lunch in one fell swoop at 1300.  He wondered where Cas was, and attributed the man's absence from the kitchen area to his later-than-usual lunchtime.  Dean cleared his throat, and it stung a little.  It dawned on him that he hadn’t spoken anything beside the occasional expletive directed at his game, in the last 24 hours.  He jabbed a straw into a premade protein shake and set off to find Cas.

Cas was in the greenhouse.  It was suddenly a much more important place now that they were actually relying on it for fresh food.  He looked up when he heard the familiar hiss and click of the door.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Hey, Cas.  How’s it going?”

Cas considered the question for a moment. “Everything in the greenhouse is doing well.  Aside from the uncertainty of our situation, I am also doing well.  How are you?”

“Good.”  Dean sounded noncommittal.  He began wandering the rows of plants, which were all arranged neatly on lit shelves about 8 feet high.  He sipped his shake, moodily.

“You do anything for fun around here, Cas?”  He tried to sound casual.

Cas straightened up and squinted.  “I enjoy my work in the greenhouse.”

Dean huffed out a laugh and rolled his eyes. “Of course you do.  But I’m asking if you do anything that is 0% productive and 100% entertainment. Fun.”

“Well I was reading some fiction earlier in the month, but right now it makes more sense to read non-fiction publications that have to do with the processes that are currently working to keep us alive.”

Dean didn’t hide his annoyance.  He was across from Cas now, peering at him through a shelf of what smelled like Basil, and he sucked down the remainder of his shake with venom until the straw gurgled with the last drops.

“What’s bothering you, Dean?”  Cas’s question was firm, though he didn’t look up from the rosemary he was dutifully trimming.

Dean blinked.  Could Cas have really just correctly interpreted his angry slurping?  Cas, who wouldn’t recognize a joke if it sprouted roots and appeared in his garden - that Cas?

“I don’t want to step on your toes, but what we’re doing here - this not-talking thing - it’s not healthy.  I’ve been in some fucked-up situations before.  That’s kind of how I got on this base in the first place.  And if I know anything it’s that there’s a certain amount of camaraderie that we _need_ to keep our mental health up.  And right now I feel like I’m in fucking solitary.”

Dean tried to look self-assured.  He wasn’t being needy.  These were facts.  Facts based on science (or at least everyman logic).  If you get locked in a bunker with one other dude, you don’t spend your first week acting like the other dude doesn’t exist.  Cas seemed like a nice enough nerd.  Dean had gone out of his way to appear pleasant and informal.  Dean wondered if Cas couldn’t spend an hour making polite dinner conversation because his nerd brain was telling him that they would inevitably grow to detest one another after a prolonged period in such close quarters.  Well fucking duh.  But Dean wasn’t ready to skip the honeymoon phase and jump right to the avoidance.  That wasn’t logical.  Sometimes nerds could be so impractical.

Cas straightened himself and turned to face Dean, who was partially obscured by an herb garden, but they could still make eye contact.

“Are you saying you would like for me be more socially available?”

“...Yes.”  Dean figured direct was best.

Cas’s eyes went to an invisible spot on the floor while he apparently did mental calculations to decide whether Dean’s request was even physically possible.

“I’ll have to think about this tonight and come up with a schedule of encounters.”

“I am now 88% positive that you’re a virgin.”

This made Cas laugh.  Dean’s brain did a cartoon double-take - Wha? - as Cas’s chest rumbled with a fleeting moment of mirth.

“I am aware of my perceived image and how it is in stark contrast to your own.  I am surprised you can muster 12% doubt.”

“Well for a giant nerd you’ve got the looks, so I figured there’s a slim possibility that someone’s taken you by force.”  Dean grinned.  Cas was a nice-looking normal person - but he could EASILY win a nerd Mr. Universe contest without even bothering to change out of his scrubs and lab-coat.  Even his nerd glasses served to make him more attractive, if you were into smart guys.

Cas looked at Dean evenly, serenely; his head tilting almost imperceptibly.  Dean looked back, waiting for any indication that maybe perhaps right that moment would be a good time to drop the plant shenanigans and converse in a way that didn’t make Dean feel like he was speaking with a android.  Cas turned back to the plants.  Dean rolled his eyes and showed himself out, loudly thanking HAL for so thoughtfully opening the door for him.

 

**[Day 5]**

“I’ve been doing some research.  It seems we need at least eight good touches a day.”

Dean was sitting with his back to the kitchen doorway, eating a large plate of eggs.  He had taken it upon himself to help clear the fridge of all the items brought in from the outside that wouldn’t be able to be reproduced going forward.  He choked on the food when he heard Cas’s voice suddenly only a few feet behind him.

“If you don’t watch it, I’m going to program HAL to let me know when you’re coming.”

Cas paused, and Dean watched him fight down his initial urge to inform Dean that he did not have the necessary expertise to reprogram the supercomputer now known as HAL.  It was fascinating to see the warring in Cas’s brain as he forced himself to let it go. 

“I apologize.  I will try to provide more audible indications when I approach.”

Dean scratched his head, and smiled at the floor.  “Right. What’s this about touching?”

“In order to remain emotionally stable, human beings are supposed to participate in at least eight instances of positive physical contact per day.”

It was Dean’s turn to cock his head to the side and narrow his eyes.  He scanned his memory.  When was the last time he was touched eight times?

“Uh. Does petting animals count?”

Cas stared at him. 

“I’m not talking about the rats. I’m talking about a dog.”

“We don’t have a dog, Dean.”

“I know we don’t have a damn dog, Cas. I’m trying to figure out if I’ve ever in my life had eight positive physical whatever in one day.”

Cas sat down in the chair across from Dean and nodded in understanding.  His eyes went far away as he also scanned the recent past looking for evidence of his own emotional stability.  All he could find were some obligatory handshakes.  Then there were pats on the shoulder and unwanted hugs from his brother, Gabriel.  He’d have to remember to apologize for discouraging his brother’s affection.  Research indicated it was the only thing keeping him even remotely rational.

“Well maybe you can stock up on a lot of touching at once, and it keeps you going for a while.” Dean mused.

Cas looked incredulous.

“I’m not suggesting it _here.”_ Dean sputtered. “I’m just trying to figure out why I’m not a sociopath yet.”

Dean looked at Cas.  Cas stared at Dean.  Dean’s eyes widened.  Cas stood up, a little too quickly.

“I will have you know that until just recently I have maintained the recommended amount of physical contact.  With other human beings.  I have been accused of being egotistical and emotionless, but I assure you I feel guilt and remorse as strongly as anyone -”

Dean reached up and gently put his hand on Castiel’s wrist, guiding him back into his chair.”

“Cas, man.  Calm down.  I don’t think you’re a sociopath.  I understand.  I’m not big on chick-flick moments either.  C’mon, relax.”

He let go of Cas’s wrist when Cas was tentatively seated once again.  They were both quiet for a moment.

“There’s one.”

“One what?” Cas questioned.

“That was one.  I touched your arm.  We’re 12% closer to not losing out shit.”

Cas brightened.  It was true.  And it had not been nearly as uncomfortable as he had imagined it would be when pictured how he would reveal this research to his bunk-mate.

“So am I going to get a memo from HAL later with a schedule of our encounters and a list of acceptable good touches?”

Cas had been staring at the LCD monitor on the refrigerator (was it REALLY necessary or just a fun way to spend $1,200?) and he didn’t notice the mocking twinkle in Dean’s eye right away.

“I was under the impression you would appreciate a more informal approach, but I can easily set up reminders…”

He trailed off as soon as he noticed Dean’s bemused expression.  He straightened his mouth and huffed through his nose.

“I’m having a difficult time adjusting to the fact that nearly everything you say is in jest.”

“I know man.  I can see that.  That’s just how I deal with all of this.”

“Does it help?” Cas gave him one of his penetrating, scientist looks.  Dean just blinked and breathed deeply, before standing up.

“I’m going to go punch some shit.”

 

**[Day 6]**

It was early morning, according to the computers and the lamps that produced faux sunlight.  Cas and Dean were both running on treadmills.  They had arrived at different times, and had not acknowledged each other yet that day. 

Dean was plodding along to some Bon Jovi.  It ended, and he flipped his earbuds out.  As usual, he and Cas had matched pace and step perfectly.  He was jogging to music, so if it was a subconscious response then it had to be Cas doing the matching.  This made him grin.  He reached over and knocked Cas in the elbow with the back of his hand.

“You following me?”

“We’re stationary.”

“Yeah, but you can hear me. You’re running the same.”

Cas had kept his eyes shut, despite Dean’s nudge.  He grimaced.

“I find it unpleasant to hear our footfalls compete in different rhythms.”

“Ha.  OCD much?”

Cas grinned at that and finally slid his eyes over to give Dean a sideways glance.

“You have no idea.”  Cas’s voice was gravelly and genuine and lacked all the formal qualities of recitation that he usually used to deliver succinct and necessary messages.  Dean nearly tripped.  They ran in unison for another five minutes.

“Well that knock there was one, but we’re way behind.  We didn’t get past one yesterday.  We’ve got 14 good touches to get through.  How is that not making your OCD science brain crazy?”

Cas gave a nod of his head to acknowledge that it was a valid question.

“You were correct in your earlier speculation that I am not adept at initiating physical contact of a romantic nature.  The same goes for platonic contact.  I -” he grimaced, “ I don’t want to make things… weird.”

Dean laughed and it echoed sweetly around the mirrored gymnasium.

“Well how’d you maintain your eight touches before you got locked in here?”

“I am forced to meet and greet a number of different scientists and army personnel on any given week.  But mostly I am jostled by my brother, Gabriel.  He has always been the most outgoing and affectionate member of our family.  Perhaps because he remembers more about our mother.”  Cas’s face darkened.  “He is probably very upset about my disappearance.  It is likely that he has received notice that I am dead.”

Dean’s face fell.  He had been thinking about that a little during his multitudinous alone time.  They had only been underground a week.  That wasn’t a big deal for someone like him.  His family had led a crazy life, and Sammy was really the only true family he had left.  For them a week of silence wasn’t anything to get alarmed about.  He hadn’t considered the fact that Cas was a civilian with a “real life” on the outside.

“Gabriel’s not a top-secret scientist like you?”

“Gabriel is a chocolatier.  He thinks I am a college librarian.”

“Shit.”  Dean breathed, letting himself become momentarily affected.  He reached over and pushed the big red STOP button on Cas’s treadmill.  He did the same to his own and ignored Cas’s confused expression, waving him off the machine.  They were both sweaty, but their musk was tempered by the sweet-smelling products provided in their showers, and their overly sterile environment.  As Cas stepped gracelessly off the edge of his treadmill Dean reached out and wrapped him in a strong hug.

Cas stood leaned into Dean for a moment, not knowing exactly how to respond.  The hug was socially acceptable, given the topic of conversation.  It also served to help fill their neglected touch quota.  He hesitated, then put his arms around Dean in return.  It seemed like a safe response, though part of him worried that the front door would suddenly burst open and he would be found in a sappy embrace with a Marine he had only known for six days. 

The door did not open.  Dean released him after what felt like an appropriate amount of time and clapped him on the shoulder a couple of times for good measure.

"I'm sorry they’re gonna put your brother through this.  I got a brother too." Dean chuckled awkwardly. "But he knows better than to think I'm gone for good."

"You've died before?" Cas felt like he had missed something.

"I've disappeared a couple of times.  Hazard of the trade."

Dean's file had been very heavily redacted when Cas pulled it up. He wasn't being nosy.  He just wanted to understand what features of Bunker41 he needed to highlight on his tour.  (He never did figure out what purpose the tour served for Dean). Dean pulled him out of his pondering before he could decide how he would phrase the question.

"Well this was good. That was like a 5 second hug.  That's gotta count for like 5 touches, right?" He patted Cas's shoulder one more time, then turned and left the gym rather abruptly.

 

 


	2. Burgers and a Movie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 7 comes, and Dean lures Cas out FINALLY.

**[Day 7]**

“Where the fuck is Cas, HAL?”

Cas’s head shot up to the monitor.  It showed Dean in the “rumpus” room playing some racing game in pale yellow scrubs, barefoot, letting his toes dig into the comfortable carpet.

Cas stood in his office, which was actually a bedroom that he commandeered for his note-taking and observations.  It was down a long hallway in a wing that no one needed, so Dean had not found it yet.  He didn’t feel like he was hiding from Dean, but any amount of objective observation would reveal that he was.  He was hiding from Dean and watching Dean all at once.  A week in isolation with the man had been infuriatingly difficult.  Cas wanted to search him out every hour.  He wanted to learn whatever game Dean was amusing himself with or watch whatever movie Dean was referencing at any given moment.  He wanted to sequester them on the bridge and have Dean give him an intensive three-day rock history course.  And if there were anywhere or anytime that these harmless, leisure activities could be enjoyed, it was here and now.

But Cas was shy and unsure of himself in such close quarters.  He agonized over the possible reception of the smallest gestures.  The out-of-the-way office had been his scientific response to that.  He would “observe” his bunk-mate for a short while to ensure that his attempts at platonic friendship would be appropriate.  The short-while he was originally picturing was just 48 hours or so.  Fast forward to day 7, and according to HAL’s meticulous records they had only shared 523 words with each other. 

Cas stood forlornly thinking about how silly he was being.  He didn’t notice Dean standing up and walking curiously towards the rumpus room camera. 

“Hey HAL.  Why don’t you tell Cas I’m going to make hamburgers.  He can meet me in the kitchen if he’s interested.”  Dean looked directly into the camera, his eyes boring into Cas from the biggest monitor.

Cas blushed as if he’d just been caught.  Logically, he appreciated that his extended observational period had at least prompted Dean to reach-out socially, and therefore alleviated some of the pressure of opening communication.  But he also couldn’t help feeling a bit like a creeper.  His neck felt clammy and he couldn’t help thinking how much easier this would have been if he were trapped inside BUNKER41 alone.

He could smell the burgers sizzling as he approached the kitchen, and he unconsciously licked his lips as he entered the room.  Dean was standing over the range top with his back to Cas, humming along with some music that Cas could hardly hear over the delightful snap crackling of frying meat.  Cas watched him for a moment before his creeper shame resurfaced and forced him to cough to alert Dean of his presence.

“Cas!  HAL must have given you my message!”  Dean twirled around, dropped his spatula on the counter and strode up to Cas to grasp his shoulders in a greeting that felt foreign, as if he had just come in from the cold and Dean was trying to shake a chill out of him.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s expression was overtly friendly.  Cas’s brain reverted to factory default, and he tilted his head and squinted.  Dean beamed through a closed-mouth grin.  He released Cas’s  shoulders and reached around to the small of his back, ushering him to a chair in front of a neat place setting.

“Why don’t you have a seat.” 

Cas sat, and received two quick pats on the shoulder as his reward.  He looked past his place setting at the rest of the table. It was littered with condiments and two bottles of scotch.  Dean had obviously been digging through some of the other scientists’ personal work areas, for the scotch on the table was not part of the bunker’s standard inventory. 

“Pour yourself a drink.  That’s an order.”  His back was to Cas again as he threw cheese onto the burgers.  It was the final countdown.  After a few seconds of melting they were plated and served.  Dean settled into his chair across from Cas and began helping himself to mayo and ketchup and a slice of fresh greenhouse tomato.

Cas followed suit and constructed his meal.  He was hungry for dinner, but he was starving for “real” food.  There was nothing stopping him from thawing meat for every meal, but his priorities were always with his research or gardening or avoiding awkward social interactions and he never bothered to have the foresight to decide what he wanted to eat a day ahead of time.  He had been surviving on salad, cereal, nuts and yogurt.  This was something special.

He bit into his dinner with gusto, nearly letting his groan of ecstasy escape before the meat actually hit his tongue.  Both men ate their first burgers without speaking, too excited about the small change of pace provided by a delicious shared meal.

By the time they had started in on seconds, Dean noticed the Cas had not bothered to pour himself a drink.  He furrowed his brows and pointed to the scotch again.

“Have a drink.  I wasn’t kidding,” he said, though it was slightly muffled by ground beef.  Cas obeyed and poured himself a short glass of liquor.  He decided not to savor it, and instead tossed it all back at once like an old pro.  Dean watched intently, not realizing that he had stopped chewing, nearly frozen in place.  He reached forward and poured Cas another glass.  Cas repeated the ritual.  He went back to his meal while Dean poured another.  In another minute that one was gone too.  Suddenly Dean felt like he was falling behind.  He poured them both another double-shot worth.  In five minutes both glasses were empty, both plates were cleaned, and both men were couched in a serene silence as they happily sucked in the dissipating fumes of meat and booze.

“That was very good.” Cas observed in his deepest, most sated tambre.

“Yeah, well.  I was wondering what would pull you out of your batcave.  Guess I figured it out.”

“There are no bats here.  This compound is the result of a man-made excavation, and is not attached to any caverns.  You were making another reference to pop culture that I do not comprehend.”

Dean grinned as Cas delivered his corrections.  He was as blunt as ever, but this time there was a dreamy wandering of his eyes, as if his voice were on autopilot and the rest of his face was allowed to stretch out and relax for a while.

“Jesus, Cas.  You need to watch a movie.  Any movie.  Seriously.  Right now.”  Dean stood up and grasped Cas’s elbow with urgency.  Cas followed without blinking and let Dean lead him to the rumpus room.

The rumpus room was all soft surfaces and fancy electronics.  Dean pulled Cas to the puffy white couch that sat in front of the largest TV.  He pushed Cas’s labcoat off his shoulders and pulled it down his back, tossing it onto a chair.  They were now both in their scrubs, Dean’s glowing tan accentuated by his yellow bottoms and a white tee shirt, while Cas was sporting yet another shade of blue, V-neck top and bottom, that somehow made his eyes flash like facets of two giant sapphires. .

“Sit.” Dean pointed at the couch.  Cas sat and waited with his hands in his lap as Dean dialed up the media library and began to surf through the action titles.  “Have you seen any of these?”

Cas squinted at the screen, then shook his head.  Dean muttered something to himself that was drowned out by the sudden blare of the surround-sound branding.  He had settled on the first Indiana Jones.  They sat in comfortable silence as the movie began.

Cas was having fun.  The movie was silly and action-packed and an awful representation of the the field of archeology, but he was genuinely enjoying it.  He wondered how much of his enjoyment could be attributed to the alcohol.  Dean had gone out of his way to make them dinner and force them to relax a little.  _Had Dean been drinking when the idea occurred to him?_   Cas’s brain flashed back to earlier when Dean had invited him through the camera.  He didn’t remember any glasses on any of the furniture, and Dean had simply been playing video games.  Cas thought harder.  He had witnessed Dean drinking and racing back on day four.  HAL was programmed to keep a record of their consumption, overall.  Cas could easily parse out the alcohol stats and see if that was a likely catalyst for their evening.

Cas reached over the arm of the couch and pulled a wireless tablet out of its dock in the wall.

“What are you doing?” Dean turned towards him quickly with an accusing gaze. “Do you want me to turn it down?”

“No, it’s fine.”  Cas was frozen in place, having forgotten in his relaxed state that he was actually in the midst of what was probably the longest social interaction he’d had in a month.  “I just wanted to check on some data.”

“No.  Give me that.” Dean held out his hand as if he expected Cas to just hand the tablet over.  Cas recoiled.

“It will only take me a second. I am curious as to the role of alcohol in influencing our social behavior.”

“You mean in influencing my behavior.  You want to know how alcohol affects me.”  Dean was speaking quietly, only revealing his emotion through a subtle flex of his jaw which Cas observed, but couldn’t quite process objectively.

“Well it is fascinating to see how a subject such as yourself reacts under this type of duress.  We would never have been able to get a test subject with your background under normal circumstances.”  Cas tried to dampen the nerdy excitement in his voice, but the dinner and the liquor and the prolonged physical exposure to another human being were getting to his head.

Dean leaned forward and snatched the tablet from his hand, tossing it across the room where it landed with a safe thud on another fluffy couch.  Cas gaped as Dean leaned forward, jutting a pointer finger into his face.

“I am NOT an experiment.”  He waved his finger between them. “WE are not an experiment.  We’re just two fucked-over people stuck in a really nice bomb shelter.”  He sat back with a huff and watched Cas have no idea how to respond.  Cas’s empty expression prompted his urge to tirade.  “Any data you get from me is shit anyway, because I’m not normal.  I’m in this thing because I’ve been through some fucked up shit and it didn’t kill me.  But if this puppy ever needs to get used for real, they’re not going to be reserving rooms for people like me.”

Cas had been staring at Dean, but a sudden wave of emotion forced him to look away.  He looked back to the screen and breathed in slowly.  Something about Dean’s self-deprecation made his chest contract, as if his heart were wincing.  It was not a pleasant sensation.  He focused on Harrison Ford, trying to empty his mind for the first time...ever.

“Look.  I’m sorry you didn’t get locked in here with one of your scientist friends.”

Cas laughed, despite himself.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get locked in here with one of my scientist friends.  You would have liked Anna.  She’s very direct, but never mean.  She always gets what she wants.  And you would think she was far too beautiful to be a scientist.”

Dean loosened his posture slightly and sunk back into his corner of the couch, turning the movie volume down slightly. 

“Beautiful, huh?  What is it with this place?  Do they only hire attractive people?”

“It’s possible.” Cas considered, objectively.  “No one polices the hiring practices of top secret government organizations.  It’s not as if any of us could ever bring a lawsuit against our employer.  I think we’d just disappear.”

Dean felt that Cas looked way too calm about the idea that his government may have hired him for his looks, and could erase him on a whim.

“And you and Balthazar would have had a better time drinking his scotch.” Cas continued.  “He’s much better at indulging, and he has good taste.”  At that moment Cas’s face was that of a child picked last for dodge ball.

“And he looks like a model?” Dean added, playfully.

“Naturally. He’s british.  He’s tall and blonde and he has an accent.”  Cas grinned, his chest feeling a bit lighter.

“Who else?”

“Well there’s my mentor, Joshua.  He’s older, though I’m sure he was also attractive in his day.  And there’s Uriel and Raphael and Michael, but they’re engineers and electricians, not researchers. I’m sure they all know how to have a drink and watch a movie without treating their companion like a lab rat.”

Cas let his eyes fall to the floor, his face warming with shame.  Dean was right.  There would never be anyone like him in BUNKER41.  He was unique and elusive and probably had war stories from multiple dimensions. Cas wanted to hear them, but it was impossible now that Dean had made it clear he was not comfortable being a subject of observation.

“Who would you have wanted to be locked in with?”  Dean looked him over with curiousity.

“I would have preferred to be sealed in by myself.” Cas answered truthfully, without hesitation.  He expected Dean to bristle, but the Marine only stared.

“You didn’t want a chance to get locked in with beautiful Anna?  Wouldn’t it have been the perfect time to, I dunno, profess your undying love.”

“I do not have an undying love for Anna.”

“Balthazar, then?”

Cas tried to eye Dean nonchalantly as he wondered at how easily he discussed homosexual relations.  He sounded completely at ease with the topic, yet his posture and cadence still had all the bravado of a relaxing Marine.

“C’mon. You would have gotten some action from someone, right?”

Cas laughed. He should have been offended at Dean’s assumptions, but he somehow understood that this line of prodding was Dean’s own form of social experimentation.  _Hypocrite,_ Cas thought, but then again it was only fair.

“It is unlikely. As I said, Anna is direct.  I would have known long before getting locked in here if she were interested in any form of a relationship.  And I’m a little too white bread for Balthazar’s refined tastes.”

Dean looked offended.

“Stop selling yourself short, Cas.  What is he, into freaky shit?”

“No. Maybe.  He told me once that he’s looking for Creme Brulee, and in the world of dessert metaphors I am a Twinkie.”

Dean blinked at Cas, his jaw flexing ever so slightly.  He finally looked away and sank back into the couch to face the TV.  They spent a minute catching up with the movie in silence.

Dean opened his mouth to say something, but closed it before he made a sound.  Cas noticed it in his periphery, as he noticed everything Dean did.  He swallowed and focused on the TV, trying to keep his observations in check.

They made it to the end of Indiana Jones both still awake, though just barely.  Cas’s eyes were bleary, and he rubbed them lightly, remaining nestled in his corner of the comfy couch.  Dean turned off the TV with a click and stood up to stretch, his tee shirt riding up to reveal the jagged cut of his hip bone.  Cas continued to blink.

“I’d be pie.  Apple pie.  If I was a dessert.”  Dean finished his stretch and gave Cas a meaningful look, as if he’d been considering it for a long time. “And fuck Balthazar.  There’s nothing wrong with Twinkies.”

Dean moved to leave the rumpus room, stepping over Cas’s feet and reaching out to ruffle his unruly hair as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  Cas felt a strange heat fan out from his shoulders to his wrists. They’d definitely nailed their eight touches that day, but it left him flustered and warm and fighting with a gnawing craving for more.  He bit his cheek. 

“‘Night, Cas.”


	3. Spar the Rod

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re eight behind, dude.” Dean clasped him like a sibling, squeezing beyond kindness in an almost pointed attempt to annoy.
> 
> “I suppose 14 hours of programming for the sake of an emotionally touching gesture counts for nothing,” Cas whined grimly into his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MILD WARNING: There is talk of porn. Nothing explicit at all. We're never going to get full smut. But we're gonna get people thinking about smut. I hope that makes sense and isn't a huge let-down. Seems like a weird no-mans-land of fiction. Not PG-13 but also no smut. I apologize.

**[Day 8]**

Cas awoke with a headache. It wasn't the end of the world, but it was nagging and uncomfortable. It was also a constant reminder that Dean had made him dinner and a movie, and Cas had tried to study his drinking habits and regale him with dull descriptions of his co-workers in return. Cas swung his legs over the edge of his bed and sat up. His ears felt like they were filled with lead. Fantastic.

He stood up and wandered around his room, finally pacing his way into the hall and towards the kitchen. Dean was already at the stove making scrambled eggs when Cas walked in. There were two plates set out for breakfast and four pieces of buttered toast in the middle of the table. Apparently Cas had perfect timing, because it was hardly a moment later before Dean had plated their eggs and poured them each some orange juice, only smiling a greeting.

"This is very nice." Cas choked out, genuinely, before wincing at the pain of hearing his own voice.

"It's nothin', man. I'm used to taking care of people. Making food." Dean started in on his meal with no indication of a weak stomach. Cas refused to make note of that in regards to estimating Dean's alcohol tolerance.

Cas ate slower, but enjoyed the hot breakfast despite his heavy head. He thought about the day before and the hamburgers and the fact that he could safely say he was one step closer to calling Dean Winchester a "friend." His insides warred with each other when they heard this, warming with joy and roiling with social anxiety and self-doubt. Dean furrowed his brow towards Cas's manic expression and pulled him out of his toast crunching reverie.

"You doing anything today?"

"Yes. A project." The words seemed to surprise Cas even as the exited his own mouth.

"Oh. You need help?"

"No. It is computer-based and will involve extensive programming."

"And you're going to do this all day?"

"Yes. It is possible I will stay up very late tonight working on it as well."

Dean kept his face impassive and Cas kept his eyes on the table to avoid catching any hint of Dean's true feelings on his plans for the day. He wasn't sure if he was avoiding a look of disappointment (which would weaken his sudden determination to do the project) or a look of complete disinterest. He stood and brought his plate to the sink.

"I'll do that, Cas. You can go do your thing."

Cas left the plate in the sink and nodded. He turned to Dean and gave him a small smile, then padded out of the kitchen to go to his "secret office" and begin tackling a monumental task.

Dean just looked around and sighed. He had been looking forward to some kind of follow-up on the previous evening. He had fun with Cas and at the same time his chest burned in sympathy for the guy, not because of his social awkwardness, but because he seemed to subsist on so little. As if Dean thrived on much more. His lip twitched up as he huffed in self-reflection. He had his brother and his car and his things that went bump in the night, plus a bunch of military bureaucracy bullshit. He loaded the high-tech dry, dishwasher and wandered towards the rumpus room to zone out for, oh, the next 12 hours or so.

  
**[Day 9]**

Dean had slept in the rumpus room. Or napped in the rumpus room. He wasn’t exactly sure because the lights stopped following the sun-cycle once he took over manual control and dimmed them for games or movies.

“Goddamnit. HAL, why can’t you make yourself useful and tell me what time it is?” He muttered, not willing to get up and access any of the various electronics around the room.

_Hello Dean. It is currently 0942._

“What the -” Dean rolled off the couch and popped to a kneeling position like a prairie dog. He stared at the doorway, expecting to see Cas. He blinked. Cas was not there. The voice had been familiar, but it was not the comforting gravel of his bunk mate. It was someone else.

“HAL? Is that you?”

_Yes, Dean. It is me._

Dean stood up slowly.

“So are you like, autonomous now? Are you SkyNet?” His eyes searched for the camera in the corner, as if he could make eye contact with the machine.

_I am not autonomous. I do not understand your reference._

This made Dean smile. It was Cas. This was Cas’s project.

“Does Cas have to sit there typing all this out or are you answering on your -”

Dean cut himself off and donned a wide smile as Cas entered the room, a bit sheepishly.

_I have been programmed to verbalize basic, logical responses to your inquiries._

“Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.”

“You fixed HAL.”

Cas grimaced with humor in his eyes.

“HAL was never broken. I simply enhanced the level of interactivity.”

“But you call him HAL now.”

Cas furrowed his brows and huffed with mock irritation.

“I call ‘it’ HAL now for the sake of conversational ease, but there is no way I’m arbitrarily assigning it a gender.”

“Well it’s got a man’s voice, but whatever. You stay up all night?”

“Yes. The programming was completed shortly before you awoke. I was hoping you’d arbitrarily address him without knowing he would respond. The resulting surprise was very gratifying.”

Dean stood for a moment, imagining the thrill of nerd delight that had likely overtaken Cas when he heard Dean call out to HAL for the time. He felt his own twinge of affection for the scientist, whose tired eyes and messy hair were doing nothing to dim his usual, innocent beauty. Dean stepped forward and pulled him into a hug.

“We’re eight behind, dude.” Dean clasped him like a sibling, squeezing beyond kindness, an almost pointed attempt to annoy.

“I suppose 14 hours of programming for the sake of an emotionally touching gesture counts for nothing,” Cas whined grimly into his shoulder.

“Hey, man. You made the good touch rules.” Dean squeezed tighter, driving home the deliberateness of their uncomfortable embrace.

“I suddenly miss Gabriel, very much.” Cas let his knees go loose and became a dead weight in Dean’s arms. Dean laughed with surprise as he tried to regain his balance and still support this limper Cas. He failed, and Cas slid gracelessly to a sitting position on the floor. His legs were splayed out in front of him. He let his head droop, before looking up again.

“I am very tired.”

Dean grabbed his arm and yanked until Cas was standing again.

“Get up. We’re gonna go do something.”

“Do what? I think it would be better if I slept.”

“No. We’ll end up with opposite schedules. And, no offense to HAL, but I am going to need a human being to talk to, occasionally.”

No offense taken, Dean.

Dean squeezed Cas’s surprisingly tight bicep a little tighter in response to HAL’s answer. He dragged them out of the rumpus room and into the gym. Letting go of Cas, he shucked off the man’s lab coat and tossed it aside. They were standing on the mats in front of the large wall of mirrors where people were meant to watch their form as they used the free weights, or did floor exercises.

“You ever sparred before?”

“Yes.”

Dean looked surprised.

“What’s your training?”

“I have a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. What is your background?”

“Huh.” Dean looked Cas over with a new expression. “I’ve done a bunch of kickboxing. A few tournaments. My wrestling is… not brown belt leve, that’s for sure.”

Cas managed a weak smile. He was swaying a little where he stood, looking worse for the wear.

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be safer if we just went for a run?”

“C’mon, Cas. It’s been like two weeks since I got the shit kicked out of me.”

“If I agree to do this, you must return the favor by telling me how you last got ‘the shit kicked out of you’.”

Dean didn’t respond. Instead he lunged towards Cas, feinting with his right to judge the distance between them. Cas intercepted his wrist and pulled him forward and down, tossing him over his head then mounting his prone form with ease. Dean attempted to put Cas in his guard, but Cas evaded his efforts.

The two men went at it with a singular focus. Dean’s style was direct. He started their battle relying on his bigger size, but after a maddening amount of turn-abouts he had finally begun to administer more cunning attacks; attacks that made use of Cas’s assumption that he would continue to blunder forward with his aggressive attempts at overpowering. Cas was trained to be clever. He was a gifted strategist. Dean’s forte was thinking on the fly. He used change to his advantage. It was how he generally came out of fights on top, be it with men, beasts or otherworldly creatures.

But today went against the mean, and Dean ended up pinned.

“Uncle. GodDAMNIT, uncle.” Dean panted, his shirt raked up to his armpits from trying to twist away from his opponent. Cas sat calmly on the base of Dean’s abdomen. He glared at it as if it offended him, and released the hold that had caused Dean to tap out.

“Oh God I needed that. Whew. Okay. Get up.” Dean reached up and patted Cas’s shoulder to jolt him out of a daze.

“I need to go to sleep.” Cas whined. He rolled off of Dean and laid on the floor for a moment, breathing slowly. His mind swam with adrenaline and fatigue, and he noticed that his shirt was clinging to him in a cloying way. He stripped it off fluidly and threw it towards his previously discarded labcoat. For a moment, Dean stared.

“I need a shower.”

And then Dean was gone, and Cas was left panting on the mats, victorious except for feeling so depleted he wasn’t sure he would make it back to his comfortable bed.

  
**[Day 10]**

Dean was fussing in the kitchen over some apple spiced oatmeal. He was had come to a fork in the road. Either he turn the slow-cooker off, and let the oatmeal get cold, or he leave it on and risk the whole batch becoming a solid block of oat-crete. He supposed he was being overly dramatic. He could add some almond milk (all they had now that the real milk was all drunk). But then he’d have to add more sugar, or risk a watering down of the flavor. He slapped a dish towel on the counter to indicate his fidgety annoyance.

“Hey, HAL.”

_Hello, Dean._

“Wake Cas up and tell him there’s breakfast.”

_I am not permitted to follow that command._

Dean frowned, but it his lips quickly curved upward.

“Hey, HAL.”

_Hello, Dean._

“Can you tell me what room Castiel is in?”

_Castiel is in in bunker wing 6, bed chamber 4bravo._

“Great. I need you to play music - Motorhead’s Ace of Spades in bunker wing 6, bed chamber 4bravo.”

_Yes, Dean._

Ha. Dean punched the air to celebrate his cleverness, even if it was just an easy circumnavigation of Cas’s feeble attempt at privacy, order and control.

Five minutes later a bleary Cas stood in the kitchen doorway, his face in conflict as he glowered at Dean and breathed in the enticing aroma of apples and cinnamon.

They went for a jog after breakfast, then parted ways, Cas leaving Dean to a Star Wars marathon as he returned to his somewhat neglected greenhouse.

That night Cas cornered Dean in the rumpus room, interrupting what looked to be a Die Hard marathon. They hadn’t really spoken all day, and had managed one good touch during breakfast when Dean patted Cas’s shoulder after delivering his oatmeal bowl to the sink. Dean was the best at initiating contact.

He initiated more contact as Cas settled into the opposite corner of the comfy couch, by reaching over and nudging Cas’s knee with his foot. Cas scowled. Surely there could be no real emotional benefit to having someone put their feet on you. He looked up to see Dean grinning at him with the same “hey there, little brother” smirk that he had worn when squeezing Cas way too tight the previous day.

“What’s up, Cas?”

“You said you would tell me how you last got the shit kicked out of you.”

“I never said that.”

“It was implied by your feeble attempts at hand-to-hand combat.”

Dean pulled his eyes away from the TV and glared at Cas, who sported a closed-mouth smile and a distinct air of pride.

“Why, I aughtta…” Dean squinted, mockingly and shook his fist at Cas, but he was secretly thrilled that Cas’s confidence was building enough to start giving Dean a hard time. He’d been feeling extra lost the last few days, and he wondered if he just didn’t have enough forces pushing at him, for him to push back on.

“Fine. The last time I got beat up. It was a tulpa, so really it was this angry Asian guy, and he was using it to break-in around town. Problem was, every time it got arrested it would end up killing a cop or a guard at the jail so I had to put it down. Which is hard. Like, sometimes impossible. I got thrown into a lot of fucking walls. Finally I ended up drugging the Asian guy and dragging his ass here.”

Cas blinked. This was not the story he was expecting. He knew that Dean must be involved in secret stuff, but he figured his penchant for action would get him into a few bar fights or maybe jumping out a married woman’s window.

“You brought the tulpa's master here?”

“Well not here, here. Up there. Don’t worry - he’s probably toast. The tulpa and the master.”

“Yes.” Cas looked at the floor. He had been avoiding thinking of the explosion as much as possible. An uncomfortable silence grew between them, and it took a few minutes for Cas to realize that Dean had muted the movie for their conversation.

“I guess assuming that all your co-workers called in sick and stayed home on bomb day is wishful thinking?”

“Yes.” He sucked in a deep breath. “It is highly unlikely that they all got out unscathed.”

Dean turned the movie volume back up, and Cas considered his dropping of the subject to be an apology of sorts. Cas tried to follow the plot, but the constant explosions grated on him and he eventually stood up and wandered out of the room. Dean stayed planted in his corner of the couch. He fell asleep there, and was awakened by an alarm he had set with HAL the morning before.

  
**[Day 11]**

Dean and Cas sat at the table eating pancakes, dripping in syrup. Dean pouted as he snapped some very unsatisfactory meatless bacon into his mouth.

“You wanna spar again today?” He managed to enunciate despite a mouth full of food.

“Not especially.”

Dean grunted his displeasure. Cas looked him over with the cool gaze of a scientist. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He narrowed his eyes and looked at his plate for a moment, before steeling himself to whatever he had intended to say previously.  
“It is possible that your physical urges could be subdued with more regular exposure to pornography.”

Dean blinked.

“There’s porn here?”

“Yes. You can access it on the tablet and TV in your room. It is under the miscellaneous tab within the media library guide.”

“There’s porn here and you’re only telling me this now?”

“I apologize?” Cas tilted his head, wondering at Dean’s openness. Cas had assumed that offering porn to a near stranger was taboo, not to mention he had figured Dean would find it on his own. But he had checked the master browser history last night, and Dean had not accessed any of it. Now it seemed the man was grateful, and displeased with him at the same time.

Dean shoveled the rest of his breakfast into his mouth with no finesse. He stood and dumped his plates in the sink, wiping his sticky hands on his scrubs.

“You’re doing the dishes.” He pointed at Cas. “I’ve got some catching up to do.”

He waltzed out of the kitchen, whistling Motorhead.

Dean wasn’t at dinner that night. Cas prepared the chicken that had been thawing, but it was bland and dry. He had carefully set some aside for Dean, who would likely be able to rescue it with a ludicrous amount of barbeque sauce.

  
**[Day 12]**

Dean wasn’t at breakfast that morning. That was odd, considering Dean had started to cook all their breakfasts himself. Cas had cereal, and a peach in the greenhouse.

 

**[Day 13]**

Cas ate alone again. Dean must have really been enjoying his porn-stravaganza. Cas went to his secret office and pulled up Dean’s music playlist. He began familiarizing himself with the artists that occurred most frequently. He found he enjoyed some of it rather enthusiastically, while some of Dean’s other regular choices baffled him. He made a note to ask Dean if the whole Man O War thing was a joke.

  
**[Day 14]**

Dean had never thought he could reach his porn limit, but he also never thought he’d be able to survive 14 days completely cut-off from society, with only the company of one other slightly-odd human. But he had survived 14 days and his porn limit was a real thing.

At first he had been delighted. There was so much porn! It boggled his mind. Sure it made sense that they’d include some in their stodgy scientific way, citing it as necessary for the sexual health of sequestered people. But really, this porn library was a little out of control. Not only that, but the menu all of the sudden became interactive. After he viewed 3 titles it began making suggestions based on his "preferences."

He would space out his viewings, obviously. He would take hot showers and watch regular movies. He’d eat, though it was always at odd hours. Sometimes he’d watch movies he remembered were sexy as a sort of porn appetizer. He wasn’t 17, but he had nowhere else to go, and a little bit of careful examination revealed that his bathroom was well stocked with not just lotion, but “personal lubricant.” Again, out of control. He had even snuck out to the gym on day 13 just to grab a quick run and get the blood flowing back to his feet.

His obsession with the porn got even weirder after he logged-in to his music playlist. When he navigated back to the porn menu, a message flashed across his screen citing a share-media option and listing “Castiel Novak” as a potential “friend” with whom he could share. He clicked “accept” and followed a “this friend has also watched...” tab that all of the sudden zapped him to the kinkiest list of porn titles ever compiled (in Bunker41, definitely).

Apparently Cas’s needs had been well taken care of (as much as they can be via self-pleasuring) since day one. Dean scrolled through the list (3x as long as the list of titles he had devoured during his two day jack-fest). It was arranged chronologically, which made it so much stranger and more illicit seeming. There was no way Cas could know about the very sharing nature of the media system. But now they were linked, so he would soon find out.

Dean began scanning the titles he had watched himself to see if he had looked at anything “too weird.” Then he quickly went back to Cas’s view list to get a baseline for what “too weird” might entail. He was becoming a regular scientist, through all of this.

For the first few days, Cas’s taste had been all over the board; girl/guy, girl/girl, girl/girl/girl, guy/girl/guy, an orgy of sorts, girl/guy/pizza guy, girl teacher/ guy student, kissing cousins, some solo stuff - a smattering of everything that Bunker41 had to offer. But after the first week a pattern emerged. There were still outlandish titles and premises, but they had begun to be alternated between the work of one “actor” in particular. Dean pulled up one of his titles, and read the “info” section. Apparently this guy did everything and everyone. Dean wondered if that was the appeal of the sandy-haired, green-eyed man, who was well-muscled and looked to be about 6’ 2”, with -

Dean’s eyes widened as he felt a new surge of arousal. This guy, this “Hugh Jirection” looked a LOT like Dean Winchester (though Dean had a better jaw, softer abs, longer eyelashes and poutier lips). And Cas seemed to be a really big fan.

Porn scientist Dean had some new information, but his upstairs brain was processing it much too slowly. Should he be weirded out? Should he be offended? Should he be flattered? What if it was a coincidence? It really couldn’t be a coincidence. Could it? What if it was subconscious and Cas didn’t even know that he was doing it? No way. There was no way Cas could miss it - he was such a data freak.

Data freak. Cas was going to freak when he realized that Dean had access to this new data.

Was that good? Was it on purpose? Was Cas trying to start something between them? Dean was generally straight - but after he ended up in the sack with an alien who claimed to possess both sets of reproductive organs he kind of threw that whole gay/straight idea right out the window and got off on anything pretty. It did wonders for his alone time and broadened his spank-bank remarkably, but he hadn’t ever actually done the deed with a real live boy. So where does that leave him - gay in mind but not body?

Too many questions. He had to focus. He had to prioritize. He stared at the TV and swiped his finger along the other Hugh Jirection titles. Thumbnails popped up as he scrolled by each one. A new thought popped into his head, and he began scrutinizing the thumbnails, searching for something that would definitely help answer a lot of his questions. It wasn’t coming up right away - this Hugh guy had been in a ton of porn! It was nice to know he had a fallback career, if he was ever let out of Bunker41.

Dean finally decided to cross-reference Cas’s view list to see if any of the videos had warranted multiple viewings. One of them had. Oh shit. He pulled up the thumbnail. Oh shit. He’d found it. The cover featured faux-Dean, dressed as a soldier (ironically?) with his arms clasped tightly around the torso of a slightly shorter dark-haired, blue-eyed man who was also sporting fatigues. There was a faux-Cas. Holy shit. It was titled “The Foxhole”. Of course.

Dean took a deep breath and clicked on The Foxhole. It was inevitable, and it was for science, and it was possibly the last video he’d be able to enjoy before his comfortable relationship with Castiel Novak imploded upon itself. He let his eyes blur as a lesser proximity of himself got trapped in a foxhole with only his shy, beautiful comrade to comfort him. And comfort each other they did. _Fucking shit,_ thought Dean Winchester, before his mind went blank and his body finally went limp.

Cas returned to his secret office from another day of neglect, tempered only by his love of the greenhouse. He pulled up the video library, thinking about letting some movie play in the background while he poured over Bunker41 stats and data. A friendly message popped up on the monitor, letting him know that Dean Winchester was now his media-share friend. He quirked his head and stared. Media share? The whole media library had been subcontracted out, so he wasn’t familiar with all the little ins and outs of the software. He clicked on the “your friends are watching…” tab. Dean Winchester was currently viewing The Foxhole.

 _Fucking shit,_ thought Cas.


	4. Over the Hump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I get it. I get it.” Dean cut him off, waving his fork with nonchalance. He stabbed a lump of eggs and brought it to his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, waiting until he swallowed to continue. “So wait, you’re saying the longer we’re here the more we’re gonna want to bang?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this. I could do it all day.

**[Day 15]**

Dean woke up when HAL began blaring Back in Black.  The alarm had seemed like a good idea when he set it, but six hours later he disagreed.  He dragged himself out of bed anyway.  He was going to face his fear, or whatever anxiety this new potential for awkwardness could be classified as.  He was going to make Cas breakfast.  He wasn’t even sure it would be weird.  He had sort of been in a porn-induced haze for the last couple of days.  That probably wasn’t healthy.  But it was out of his system now (in so many ways) and it was time to eat.

Cas was already sitting, eating a yogurt when Dean entered the kitchen.

“Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.”

So far so good. Everything sounded normal.  Cas looked up for the usual amount of eye contact.  Dean didn’t go so far as to pat his shoulder, but good touch be damned, for now.

“You gonna still be hungry if I make breakfast?”

Cas considered.  He wasn’t a big eater in the morning, but he had missed Dean’s cooking.

“Yes, I’ll eat whatever you make.”

“Great.”

Dean got to work rattling the pots and pans.  Cas finished his yogurt, then pulled a tablet out of the wall to fiddle with some diagnostic numbers.  He didn’t trust himself to leave before breakfast was served, knowing he’d probably get caught up with something intricate and end up giving Dean the impression that he had been too impatient or uncomfortable to wait.  He wondered exactly what impression he was giving off.  Did it look like he wanted desperately to be near Dean?  It would make sense that he missed him.  They were apart for nearly three days.  They were at least 24 good touches behind.  He found himself staring through the tablet, entranced by his own thoughts and the crackle of frying bacon. 

Dean served breakfast and they began to eat in silence.  Cas couldn’t stop himself from continuing to wonder just exactly what Dean thought of him.  Dean had kept his eyes on his plate.  Clearly their relationship had been affected in some way.  This pained Cas, as he had been enjoying their progress so very much.  Ever the scientist, Cas weighed his options and decided the head-on approach couldn’t make their relationship any more uncomfortable than it already was, and could possibly, maybe improve it.

“I’d like to discuss your recent video viewing habits.”

Dean dropped his fork and looked up, a small flash of anger flitting by before it was sewn up with a stony look of humor.

“You’d like to discuss my porn watching?  No offense, Cas, but I don’t usually talk about porn with people I’m not sleeping with.”

“I have a confession to make -” Dean swallowed hard and Cas rushed ahead to quell his fears. “I have access to review the media selections made by all BUNKER41 users, separate from the Media Share system that we just recently discovered.  That is how I knew you hadn’t been partaking in the adult video selections.”

“You could spy on everything I’ve done this whole time. Well, that’s the start of every great friendship, right there.” Dean chewed a large bite of banana, sarcastically.

“I apologize.  I regularly collect data on a multitude of topics, and until recently I didn’t understand that it could be considered an invasion of privacy.  But the Media Share feature has allowed you to access my viewing history, and I find that that has made me uncomfortable.  I am not sure that you will come to the correct conclusions about me, based on that information.”

“Why?  You think because I’m not some scientist that I can’t figure you out?”

“No.  You are very apt at figuring people out -”

“Damn right I am.  You know what your problem is?  You’re afraid I’m too good at it, and that I’m going to figure out what makes you tick before you figure it out for yourself.”

Cas clenched his teeth and looked down at his plate without formulating a comeback.  He relaxed his jaw and sighed, meeting Dean’s gaze once again and holding it with his piercing gaze.

“There is nothing to figure out.  My preference for pornagraphic material containing a -” his voice lowered “- certain actor is simply a biological response to prolonged exposure to a very limited demographic.  Studies have shown that constant exposure to specific traits such as hair color or body type produce a subconscious and involuntary preference for those traits.  My goal was to alleviate the tension caused by this physiological response so that it would not get in the way of our …friendship.”

Cas was looking at his lap now, and Dean’s heart suddenly warmed for him.  Dean was well-liked, but he traveled a lot and did top-secret work.  He hadn’t had a “friend” in years, but he also hadn’t worried about it. 

“Jesus, Cas.  You sound like Sam.  Can HAL translate all that?”

Cas squinted.

“It is likely HAL’s version would contain even more formal terminology.  He has access to all the research.  I just-”

“I get it.  I get it.”  Dean cut him off, waving his fork with nonchalance.  He stabbed a lump of eggs and brought it to his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, waiting until he swallowed to continue.  “So wait, you’re saying the longer we’re here the more we’re gonna want to bang?”

Cas’s eyes went wide for a moment, before he began his clinical reasoning aloud.

“Well there are other factors involved.  The longer we are here the more likely it is we will find each other's’ idiosyncrasies increasingly unpleasant, which would probably override a good amount of increased sexual attraction.  Sexual preference would also be a deciding factor.  I am personally comfortable labeling myself as ‘bisexual’.  Your sexual history is unknown to me, but someone with your upbringing, title, work history and physical make-up is more likely to view their hetersexuality as an imovable pillar of their personality, which would leave them less open to experimentation with the same sex.  If the increased sexual attraction was able to break through their initial reservations it could lead to a crisis in identity.”

Dean furrowed his brow.

“You’ve really thought this through, huh?”

“I think everything through.”

“So if we’re here another two weeks, what’s the likelihood that we’ll have sex?”

Cas breathed in quickly, almost snorting.  He was not prepared for Dean’s easy line of questioning, though he should have expected it.  Everything Dean did seemed easy or effortless.  Even his annoyance was unbridled, and therefore sort of calming.  It was beginning to drive Cas crazy.

“I do not think it would be right to answer that.  Subjects tend to interpret a high rate of probability as an inevitability, which skews their future decision making.”

Dean smiled, sweetly.  Cas’s heart fluttered.

“Hey, HAL?  What’s the probability that Cas and I will have sexual relations in the next month?”

Cas’s face flushed red as he cursed himself for allowing HAL to pass any and all requested information on to Dean. 

_There is a 28% chance that Dean and Castiel will willingly partake in contact of a sexual nature within the next 30 days._

“Thank you, HAL.”

_You are welcome, Dean._

“I’m assuming that’s on the low side because you think I’m the big scary lieutenant homophobe.”

Cas blushed even redder.  Dean laughed at his flustered bunk-mate.  It was fun to turn his own research against him and make him squirm.  Dean guessed that this was good for Cas, that he needed to see his research in action instead of viewing the two of them as if they were just walking equations.  Dean stood up and dropped his plates in the sink.

“C’mon, you big nerd.  We’re gonna spar.  We’re behind in our good touches, and you’ve been thinking too hard.  You need to get this shit out of your system.”

Cas froze for a good 30 seconds, then finally followed Dean out, despite his better judgement.  After noting the sudden increase in his heart rate as Dean had brushed past him, he realized that writhing around on the mats fighting for dominance would not be the advisable course of action.  But what would?  Another viewing of The Foxhole?  He bit his lip and let his lab coat fall off his shoulders into his hand. 

Dean stripped off his shirt when they reached the gym and began to stretch.  Cas frowned and left his shirt on.  Dean was clearly trying fluster Cas to gain an advantage in their wrestling.  It was probably going to work.

They began to tussle, and Cas was quickly put on his back by a leg sweep.  He huffed as the wind knocked out of his lungs.  Dean pounced on his hands, looking for wrist control.

“So were you hoping it would be higher or lower?”  Dean breathed out while focusing on Cas’s wrist.

“What?”  Cas rolled out Dean’s grip, exposing his back.

“The chance that we’d - you know.”  Dean moved to put Cas in a choke hold, but Cas slid an arm into position to prevent that.  He was left in an awkward position with little leverage.

“I - lower.”  Cas made use of his pretty impressive flexibility, rolling out of Dean’s failed choke.

“What?” Dean looked offended.  Cas smiled, enjoying his bruised ego for a moment, before finding Dean’s wrist and throwing his legs over his chest for the beginning of an arm bar.

“How low is your self-worth that you’re pandering for compliments from a reclusive researcher and a computer?”

Dean’s free hand shot over to grab his captured hand, but he overshot and nicked Cas in the nose.  Cas shook it off, blinking, without a complaint, but his arm bar was compromised by a moment of relaxation.  Dean rolled out of the hold and jumped to his feet.  Cas remained on his back, legs up to deflect an kicks or punches that might come before he could also stand.

“Look, I’m not 100% straight, okay?  So if we could be having some fun while we’re stuck in here then who’s to say that’s a bad thing?”

Cas swept a leg around to hook the back of Dean’s knee, flooring him with a grunt.  He rolled over to get the advantage, but Dean was ready, pulling his arm away, tapping Cas’s face lightly when he left himself unguarded, and rolling out of submission attempts with renewed speed and agility.

“I - _Jesus_ “ Cas struggled to pin one of Dean’s wrists as Dean tapped him in the face with his other hand.   Dean grinned at Cas’s blasphemous explanation.  It was so rare that Cas lost control of his stoic demeanor.  Cas growled.  “I - dealing with - the loss of your company, after we are released, will be significant enough without allowing romantic feelings into the equation.”

Cas had suffered through Dean’s playful jabs and finally secured the arm bar.  He pulled back, tentatively, careful not to damage Dean’s arm.  Dean considered keeping quiet until Cas let up, knowing he would never break his arm - but that seemed unsportsmanlike.  He tapped out on Cas’s forearm.

They broke apart and sprawled out on the mats, breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling, which was also partially mirrored.

“So,”  Dean grinned kindly, looking up at Cas’s reflection, “you’re gonna miss me.”

“Yes.”  Though he had just won, Cas sounded defeated and did not meet Dean’s eyes.

Dean considered this.  It was flattering.  Professionally he was nearly invisible, and was likely not missed by anyone but a few key managers even after two weeks of radio silence.  Even Sam was used to long gaps between their brotherly chats.  There were probably a few (dozen) women who missed him on those off nights when the bars were full of smelly townies or effeminate hipsters.  But overall his presence, or lack thereof, wasn’t leaving a hole in anyone’s life.  But now, thanks to chance or fate or whatever, whenever they got out of there Cas would miss him.

Dean sat up.

“I’ll miss you too, man.  I mean, it’s science right?  I’m gonna be used to you being around all the time, and then you won’t be.”

Cas remained on his back, still looking at the ceiling.

“Yes.  Science.”  He said, flatly.

“Yeah.  I’ll feel better if I know you’re here.  I’ll just check up on you every once in awhile.  Or you can have HAL email me.”

Cas raised his head to squint at Dean.

“You’d do that?”

“Sure.  But the chick-flick moment is over.”  Dean flopped back down on his back, uncomfortable after watching Cas’s chest heave for a minute.  He looked up at the ceiling again.  Cas was watching him this time, and he could only lay there a moment before his face was warmer than it had been while sparring.  He hopped to his feet and started towards the door, stepping lightly over Cas’s still-prone body.

“There’s another reason we could never sleep together.”  He said, forcing his voice to stay lighthearted.

“What’s that?”

“Because you know the minute we do it the door’s gonna open and everyone will be staring at us.”

Cas grinned.  At least he wasn’t the only one who was paranoid about being discovered in the act. 

“That is 99% probable.”

Dean paused.

“Really?  That’s the science?” He mocked.

“It is.  It’s Murphy’s law.”  Cas shot back.

Dean laughed and sauntered out. Cas suffered a wave of tachycardia in response to Dean’s deep chuckle.  


	5. The Final Countdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Now that we have a tentative release date, I am free to drop some of the long-term maintenance tasks I’ve been performing. I’d like to use this extra time to watch some more classic films, if you have any recommendations.”
> 
> Dean smiled, as he did in response to most of what Cas said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I caved. This is me caving. AND LOVING IT.  
> THANK you for pushing me to finish. Chapter 6 is started. The end is nigh.  
> If you want to review Cas's serious face and Dean's twitchy face, you can watch my fan vid that in no way has anything to do with this fic, but is still edifying in its own way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCO-Nqxn46I

**[Day 16]**

Dean sat up with a start when HAL began regaling him with information. His mind was fuzzy, and it took a few moments before he realized HAL was reporting on a change in the surface activity.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Start over.”

Very well, Dean. Surface activity has increased over BUNKER41. Based on the locations of the excavation and precautions being taken it is 70% likely that workers are attempting to access the bunker. Working at the current rate, surface crews will be able to enter the bunker in approximately 10 days through the emergency hatch in Wing C. This estimate is based on the assumption that the workers have a detailed layout of the bunker at their disposal. If not, it will take approximately six additional days to locate a suitable entrance without the bunker plans.

Cas appeared in Dean’s doorway, sliding the panel open without knocking.

“Did you hear the news?” His eyes were bright, though his body language was subdued. Dean looked at him with a wry fondness.

“Yeah I heard, you big dork. C’mon. Good touch hug.” He slid out from under his covers and pulled Cas into a friendly embrace, one arm wrapped around his shoulders while the other patted his back with force. Cas relaxed into the hug, and even reciprocated. They were celebrating, after all.

“I’ll make breakfast.” Dean offered unnecessarily, then nodded towards the door. He gazed at Cas’s back as they walked single-file towards the kitchen. There was not much to see, other than Cas’s white lab coat sailing gracefully behind him. Dean’s fun-time mind wandered in with a reminder that the coat was hiding a firm, powerful posterior. He felt a sudden surge of loss as he realized it was very unlikely his acquaintance with Cas’s body would progress any further before they were both freed from their maroonment.

About two weeks. That’s all they had left, give or take. They were no longer castaways on an never-to-be-discovered desert island. They weren’t the last two astronauts on a mission gone wrong, hurtling towards the sun with only the stars to bear witness. Furthermore, Dean never again had to worry about answering any more of those seemingly unimportant hypotheticals that get lobbed at you by lazy conversationalists; like who would he choose to be stuck on a desert island with (Cas) or would he sleep with Cas if he were the last man on earth (duh).

The impending end of their sequestration put a firm kibosh on their ever-increasing will-we/ won’t we sexual tension. Cas had all but confessed he was too sensitive to love ‘em and leave ‘em. Dean mourned the loss as he fried them up some tofu-eggs. Despite that, he quickly noticed a positive. They had been giving each other rather wide berths thus far, presumably because they were each concerned that they might overstay their welcome with the other. But HAL’s news had startled and excited Cas. It was his new friendship’s expiration date, or at least the sell-by, which you could comfortably hold for a day or two longer before expecting some curdling. Cas fidgeted in his seat as Dean served them, barely able to contain his agenda for the day.

“Now that we have a tentative release date, I am free to drop some of the long-term maintenance tasks I’ve been performing. I’d like to use this extra time to watch some more classic films, if you have any recommendations.”

Dean smiled, as he did in response to most of what Cas said.

“You wanna have a movie marathon? Okay by me.” This earned him a sheepish grin.

“You’ve already viewed a large number of videos. If you’d get tired of it, I also would not be averse to learning one of your video games.”

“You want to game? Really? Cas, you could write a video game.”

“I could write Pong. It takes whole companies of programmers and artists to produce the games you’ve been playing.”

“Alright, alright. You wanna watch movies and play games. First I gotta know, who are you and what have you done with Cas the giant nerd?”

Cas fixed him with a stone serious pout. Dean shoved the rest of his breakfast into his mouth and grinned around a very un-ladylike mouthful.

“C’mon then, finish up. Fuck the dishes.”

……………………………………….

Dean spewed scotch over the couch, and Cas was pretty sure that he had only taken such a large sip of it in anticipation of Cas’s answer.

“You’ve never seen Goonies? Okay, Lord of the Rings is on hold. Goonies it is. Christ, I’m not sure if I can take seven straight hours of Sean Astin. Hey, you like football? We could throw Rudy in and go all out.” Dean stared at the TV with the remote in his hand, apparently sizing-up his inner Sean Astin devotion.

“Is he the director?” Dean chuckled at Cas’s innocent interest. He selected Goonies and pressed play, backing himself into the couch until he fell into the middle cushions with a huff, nearly sloshing his liquor onto his lap. Cas reached over to offer him a bowl of popcorn which seemed to have materialized out of thin air. The familiar shrill of Cyndi Lauper filled the room.

“You and your brother really never just sat around and watched movies?”

Cas looked thoughtful but not embarrassed as he munched on popcorn.

“We spent a lot of time training for adulthood. I guess we didn’t have much of a childhood, to speak of.”

“Huh.”

“I think that’s probably what drove Gabriel to rebel. He went off traveling and lived a lot of life before settling down with the chocolate. And even that is hard to take seriously as a career choice, knowing what he knows.”

“What’s he know?”

“A lot about a lot. Our father trained us as if we’d become CIA operatives when we were 18. He begrudgingly allowed me to pursue my science and math concentrations after I tested at gifted levels. Gabriel was a people person. He can speak 12 languages. He received maybe a little too much instruction in subterfuge.”

Dean though for a bit, then narrowed his eyes.

“So you’re saying even though you were both raised to be spies, Gabriel ‘rebelled’ and ran all over the world before becoming a chocolatier. And he genuinely believes that you, with all your math and science training, are a college librarian?”

Cas’s chewing slowed to a stop.

“Yes?”

Dean smirked.

“Cas, your brother is definitely a spy. Or he was.”

“Oh.”

Dean patted him on the shoulder.

“It’s okay, man. My brother’s a lawyer, so he thinks I don’t realize that he’s taking care of all the paranormal threats within a 100 mile radius of his home. It’s kind of a bummer because I don’t get called into his neck of the woods as much. But we both do what we were raised to do.”

Cas furrowed his brow and nibbled apart the errant skin of a popcorn kernel.

“Do you wonder who you would have become if you’d had your mother?”

Dean turned and really looked at Cas, who was fixed on the TV. Goonies suddenly felt like a very juvenile choice of entertainment, but maybe it was fitting, as Cas was lamenting his lost youth. Dean pushed on his sternum as if he suddenly had heartburn, and continued to stare at Cas for a full minute before he cleared his throat.

“You’re you, Cas, with or without a mom. Yeah, there’s a piece missing, but it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have ended up anywhere other than down here with your computers and your garden and HAL and everything else you love.”

Cas’s eyes darted to Dean, furtively, at the mention of ‘everything else’. He tuned back in to the movie for a moment longer before shifting his gaze and his posture towards Dean.

“My father was very distant. I think I would have been better at getting close to people. Gabriel managed to figure it out on his own.”

“You mean physically close to people, or emotionally?”

“Do they not go hand in hand?” Cas wondered.

“Well yeah. Sure. Usually.” Dean shot back the rest of his post-breakfast scotch and set his glass on the floor. “Let’s see what we’ve been missing.” Suddenly Dean was on the couch on all fours. Cas’s eyes widened. Dean reached forward and took the popcorn bowl out of his hands and set it on the carpet. Cas’s hand lingered in the air until Dean swatted it to the side. He advanced slowly until his face was poised to nuzzle Cas’s neck.

“C’mon Cas, you’re gonna learn to snuggle. I haven’t done this since Sammy was eight.”

Dean smashed his face gracelessly into the side of Cas’s face for a moment while he pulled his legs in underneath himself and dug an arm between the small of Cas’s back and the couch.

“Um.” Cas pulled his inside arm up and set it around Dean very tentatively, his free arm still hovering around the armrest where it had remained after being swatted. Dean pulled his face out of Cas’s neck and settled the side of his forehead against Cas’s chin.

“Actually I’ve never done this as the huggee. I’ve only ever been the hugger. Wake up, buddy. Get your other arm in here.” Dean reached up and ever-so-gently slapped Cas’s cheeks before linking his arm around Cas’s stomach.

Cas breathed in, suddenly alert. He pushed off his feet to put himself into a more upright position, temporarily giving space to the warm arm behind his back. Dean somehow clicked into place around Cas’s midsection, though Cas was still at a loss for where to place his far hand. He settled it awkwardly on the bicep that Dean had slung across his abdomen.

“Okay now play with my hair.”

“Excuse me?”

“This hand. Off the shoulder. On my head.” Dean jerked his head towards the hand at the end of the shoulder that was currently his pillow. Cas picked it up slowly and wondered at its blind obedience as he sunk his fingers into Dean’s short hair. Dean shut his eyes and sighed. Cas sent his eyes to the TV and meditated on how unattractive Mama Fertelli was. It was the best way he could currently think of to dissipate the heat that Dean was radiating into him. He directed it away from the pit of his groin, sending it to his feet and his head and the tips of his fingers. Eventually his body got the message. Nothing to get excited about here, just some good, old fashioned cuddling.

They sat laced together through the next 30 minutes of the film, both breathing slowly, drowsy from the warmth of the shared space. Cas couldn’t see Dean’s face, and was convinced that he was sleeping until he chuckled at the screen. Cas continued to run his fingers gently over Dean’s scalp, as instructed.

“I’d taken care of Sammy since I was four,” Dean stated, out of nowhere. “I made him food and gave him hugs and played catch and fixed his cuts and then when he was eight he decided he was a big boy and he didn’t need to be babied anymore. I was twelve. We hardly touched after that. The next time I got close to someone was when I started feeling up girls in high school.”

He trailed off, and Cas somehow could feel him blink. The fingers twined in Dean’s hair had paused, and Dean nudged back into them, searching for more movement.

“You pursued sexual relationships in order to receive platonic affection.” Cas stated, as if he were reading the results of a study. Dean shifted to feel more of the low vibrations of Cas’s speech.

“I pursued sexual relationships because sex is awesome.” Dean guffawed. They fell into silence again as Chunk and Sloth fought their way out of another precarious situation. Five minutes or so ticked by.

“It’s nice to feel like you’re taking care of someone. Even when it’s a one night thing.”

Dean could feel Cas smile into his temple.

“It is.”

………………………………………………………..

The Cas and Dean cuddle marathon lasted almost eight full hours, interrupted only by short breaks to visit the kitchen or the bathroom, and sometimes just to get the blood flowing back to a seemingly dead limb. Cas had delayed his first bathroom break for as long as he possibly could, thinking there was no way to return to their entanglement once he broke them apart. Thankfully, Dean had morphed into a shameless octopus, ordering Cas around into various resting positions that generally turned out to be surprisingly comfortable, despite the fact that both men were comprised of mostly hard muscles and angles.

By the end of the second installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy they were both comfortable enough with their new good-touch physical relationship to have fallen asleep. An emotional swell in the music of the credits caused Cas to wake with a slight start. Dean began to stir as well.

“Holy shit, what time is it?”

Cas shifted, lifting a hand from Dean’s shoulder to reach for the remote. It was unnecessary, as HAL piped up to answer them.

_It is 1948._

Dean rolled off the couch in surprise, and blushed as if he’d been caught in bed with a date. Cas gave him an amused look.

“Ugh. I need to go run or something.” He stood up and stretched as he sauntered towards the door. “You gonna be back here later?”

Cas looked surprised.

“What for?”

Dean snorted, then walked out the open door. Cas could just hear his voice bouncing back to him from the hall.

“Because Hugh Jirection doesn't provide aftercare.”

Cas winced and dropped his forehead into his hands. He had purposefully shut down the possibility of a sexual fling and provided Dean with the means to take care of himself. He had done this to avoid forming any unrequited emotional attachments to the man who on paper seemed determined to be the world’s most eligible bachelor.

Now Dean had turned good touch against him. He shivered a little as he sat alone on the couch, uncomfortably chill without the quiet furnace that was Dean draped over him. He told himself it was just the heat he missed. The man was nothing more than a very efficient electric blanket. And the touches were positive emotional touches. They were easily caught up on the days they had missed. At this rate he’d be the most emotionally stable man on the planet by the time the door was unsealed. Of course that stability would quickly dissolve as soon they stepped out and went their separate ways. Cas sighed. He felt a sudden heat behind his eyes, like the flash of a migraine. It dulled his senses with its intensity, and he pressed his palm into the bridge of his nose with a grimace. His brain slowly scanned through a list of items that might make him feel better. A glass of water, perhaps. An ibuprofen, maybe. Another nap session with his bunk-mate, very likely. He laughed. He was anticipating being hopelessly hung up on Dean Winchester and the only cure was more Dean Winchester.

Fuck it. He’d get a glass of water, and ibuprofen, and be back later.

  
**[Day 17]**

They had managed to part ways and sleep in separate beds the night before, both of them knowing they needed to move around in their sleep more than the TV room couch would allow. They had breakfast, and went jogging and then Dean followed Cas around the greenhouse, presumably so bored with movies and video games that it was worth it to feign an interest in plants. Cas tried to show him the most interesting features, but he gave up after receiving one too many blank stares and simply asked Dean to help him move some of the bigger planters around so that everything was better organized. He let Dean play music in the greenhouse, as loud as he liked.

They had wine with dinner (Dean found Anna’s stash) and ended up on the TV room couch, Dean sitting up in the middle with Cas sitting against the armrest, sideways, his legs over Dean’s lap. That lasted right up until Dean grabbed Cas’s big toe and started reciting this little piggy. Cas curled up defensively and ended up clutched to Dean’s chest like a big baby. So be it. They watched some episodes of some BBC show that neither of them had ever heard of, then broke apart to flee back to their own rooms, and visit their private media collections safely behind closed doors.

  
**[Day 18]**

Cas told Dean at breakfast he had work to do. There was a wealth of information coming in now that there were crews above ground trying to get to them. Cas was trying to produce an accurate simulation of their progress in order to be ready for their arrival, and aware of any damage that might occur if mistakes were made by the excavators. Dean played around in the gym, exercising nearly to exhaustion. But it was Cas who leaned up against Dean as he passed him in the hallway, eyes bleary from staring at a tablet screen for 5 hours straight. Dean tilted his cheek into Cas’s hair and lifted his heavy arms up to give the scientist a short squeeze.

  
**[Day 19]**

Cas wasn’t sure what Dean had done all day, but at dinner he looked fresh and smelled wonderful. They met up in the TV room and started watching The Mummy. Dean yawned his arm around Cas like a high school boyfriend, but the couch pushed his arm into Cas’s neck at an uncomfortable angle. Cas harrumphed and grabbed a pillow. He shoved it into Dean’s lap and curled up on it. Dean ran his fingers through Cas’s hair until they both heard a noise.

They paused the movie and listened. The noise was deep and repetitive. The excavation was getting closer.

“Do you need to go look at your data or something?” Dean asked, without stopping Cas’s scalp massage.

“No.”

They sat quietly, listening to the thrumming, not sure if they were hearing it, or just feeling it vibrating through the couch. Eventually Dean turned the movie back on, lowering the volume so that the distant sounds of digging remained in the background. It was an exceedingly somber viewing of what is largely considered a pretty lighthearted movie.

  
**[Day 20]**

Dean had been following Cas around the greenhouse, and it was making him crazy. He couldn’t think straight. His mind had exactly three modes at this point: 1) Happily cuddling with Dean, 2) Fretting about the impending loss of Dean, and 3) Trying but usually failing to ignore Dean. The third option was the most frustrating, especially when Dean seemed to be anticipating every space Cas was about to fill, and putting himself in it first.

“Dean. I need to think.” Cas gritted his teeth as Dean stepped in front of the plant Cas was about to photograph.

“Am I stopping you?” Dean was genuinely curious.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“You’re in my way.”

Dean’s face fell, and his eyes hardened. He threw his hands in the pockets of the lab coat he’d taken to wearing now and then.

“Fine.” He stalked out of the greenhouse without so much as a thanks to HAL as the door slid open in anticipation of his exit.

Cas sighed and continued studying the plant previously blocked by Dean. It was uninteresting and he wished it would die. The plant shivered. That was odd. Cas set his hand on the counter and squinted at nothing. He felt a new vibration in the bunker, an almost electric frequency that was different from the thudding they had grown used to. He wondered if Dean felt it too. If so, he hadn’t come back to say anything about it.

Cas moved towards the doorway where the greenhouse tablet was housed, but his eyes were tired and there was just no good substitute for a real keyboard when processing large amounts of data, quickly. Instead he walked through the door and off towards the comfort of his neglected office. He placed his hand on the walls at random intervals to check if the new vibration was still there, and whether it was getting stronger or weaker has he got further and further down Wing D. The strange vibration felt equally strong wherever he put his hand, and the frequency tickled his fingertips like both contacts of a C battery.

He smelled something off as he got within sight of his office door. He immediately stopped breathing and peered frantically at the warning indicator lights perched in the corner of the ceiling. They were inactive, but there was definitely something in the air. He was hit with a sudden wave of panic, wondering where Dean had ended up, and if the smell was stronger there. The Bunker’s sensors should have been able to detect and alert them to even the slightest abnormalities - yet all was silent.

“HAL?” He ventured, shakily, though he had never actually programmed HAL to respond to his voice.

There was no answer.

“HAL, can you tell me where Dean is?” He tried again, expecting HAL to have magically sprung a sentient consciousness.

Silence again.

He breathed in deeply through his nose, trying to analyse every particle like some sort of machine. But all his brain could tell him was “fine, okay, normal, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.”

“Hey, Cas? Where are you?”

Dean’s voice sounded small, bouncing down the long hallway from somewhere towards the center of the compound. Cas grabbed at his stinging eyes, telling himself that the weird smell was making them dry.

A thunderous clap snapped him to attention, just in time for a shockwave of fine debris to knock him five feet back and onto his ass. Everything went black, and after the impact he couldn’t be sure if he had been knocked unconscious for any length of time or if the lights had snapped out just a second prior. The atmosphere of the hall was different. There was no echo. There was no plastic reverberation. There was just a cool dust and the smell of dirt, and then Dean’s desperate voice, muffled by what could only be a wall of solid debris.

“Cas!”

 


	6. One Night, Standing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Less and less space squeezes more and more feelings out of the stones known as Cas and Dean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooooo HOOO.  
> Done and done.  
> Ended up with 7 chapters instead of 6. Close enough.

Dean ran towards the sound, towards a sudden, unnatural darkness. There were no flashing lights, oddly enough. No sirens or beeps or wailing airhorns. None of the systems seemed to be reporting any failures, then out of nowhere one giant fucking failure loomed in front of him.  He was looking up at a wall of dirt.

 

“Cas! CAS! Can you hear me, Cas?!”

 

He dug at the pile, pulling out a rock and tossing it behind him. More dirt rolled down to take its place.  His brain though about the physics of what was happening and told him the more dirt he moved the more dirt would fall in.  He continued to paw at it, grasping chunks of cool earth and flinging them aside until he had to stop to breath.

 

“CAS!”  The edges of his voice echoed down the corridor behind him while the majority was sucked into the blockage.

 

He stood stark still, one foot on the floor, one foot higher, dug into the side of the mound, listening intently.  He couldn’t hear anything over the noise of his own heavy breathing.  He growled and stepped back from the wall of dirt.  He watched it.  It didn’t move.  He took another step back.  Still nothing.  Anecdotally satisfied that no more caving was about to occur (there’s no way he could really know that) he raced back towards the center of the compound, reviewing everything he had learned about Bunker 41 in the last two weeks.

 

Water supply. Greenhouse. Entertainment.  Shared porn.  Kitchen.  Freezers.  Power.  Talking computer.  HAL.  HAL!

 

“HAL can you fucking hear me?”

 

Hello, Dean.

 

“You fucking fuck-bastard!  What the hell happened in Wing D?”

 

I am not getting any data returned from the sensors in Wing D.

 

“No shit.  Could you possibly detect why that is?”

 

Wing D was removed from the default reporting plan and put under manual control two weeks ago by Dr. Castiel Novak.

 

“Well add it back in.  Go to default.  Do something!”

 

That request requires the permission of Dr. Castiel Novak in order to complete.

 

“FUCK, Cas!  And fuck you too, HAL!”  Dean tried to put his fist through a light panel, but he didn’t follow through and ended up scraping his knuckles along the textured plexiglass.  The stinging gave his eyes the excuse they were looking for, and they began to water, hot tears oozing down his nose, pretending to be a response to pain.

 

Dean wiped his forefinger and thumb along his lashes, meeting them at the bridge of his nose and huffing out a sigh.  He needed to pull it together.  He needed to get to Cas.  Cas was definitely on the other side trying to get to him, that he knew for sure.  He gulped another breath of air and set off towards the greenhouse storage room at a run.

 

………………………………….

 

Cas didn’t really know what to compare his pain to.  He used martial arts to stay in shape, and sparred with other people on a semi-regular basis, but the pain he was feeling didn’t compare to the pain of human to human contact, or the next-day soreness.  His current level of uncomfortableness reminded him more of the one time in his childhood he had been permitted to go sledding, and Gabriel had sent him over a four foot jump on a cheap and cracking saucer sled.  That was it.  He felt like he had just become well acquainted with another ice-filled snowbank.

 

He rolled to a sitting position, and found he was near enough the wall to lean on it for back support.  It was pitch black, which was very wrong.  It shouldn’t have been so black.  There were systems set in place to prevent this kind of darkness from ever occurring in Bunker41.   Systems that he himself had programmed.  Systems that he had taken offline two weeks ago because they were tied into the main reporting features, when he decided he was not about to share his observations of one Dean Winchester with the rest Area 51.  Oh.  Well shit.

 

He listened, but he couldn’t hear a thing.  There was not one whimper of electronic activity.  No distant hiss of an obedient sliding door. What had happened to the rest of the bunker?  Theoretically, nothing was supposed to be able to do this kind of damage to any part of the compound.  That theory was now defunct.  New theory: concentrated explosions followed by haphazard excavation can cause cave-ins in the individual wings, while the core of the bunker remains secure.  He hoped.  He really, really hoped.

 

He wiggled his toes.  They hurt a little.  He stretched his arms out into the dark.  His elbows popped, and he may have heard a joint or two groan.  At any given time he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut.

 

“Dean?”  His voice croaked out into the emptiness.  Not that it was much of a surprise at this point, but his throat hurt, and his neck was sore as well.

 

“HAL?”  Again, no answer.  He was alone with no light and no food and no water and perhaps limited air, but definitely no way of knowing whether the air was limited or not.  

 

“This is retribution for setting up this stupid fucking office.”  He yelled at himself, despite the discomfort in his throat.  “Excellent work, Castiel.  Be sure to set yourself up as far away from possible help as you can.”  He sighed.  He wished he could see his secret lair a little better.  He would kick a chair or maybe poke an LCD monitor very hard to illustrate his disappointment.  As he was he could do nothing but sit and stare into blackness.  He didn’t even bother to move.  There was no point, and he didn’t want to do anything that would make him feel disoriented, therefore increasing his already high panic level to unmanageable levels.

 

He wondered where Dean was, and if he was alright.  If the cave-in was limited to that one gaping hole, then Dean was probably fine.  Was he avoiding the collapsed area?  Was help on the way?  He couldn’t decide what he was hoping for - Dean to play it safe and wait for the rescue crew to arrive, or for him to start digging his way over with reckless abandon.  One option certainly did more for the ego, though he didn’t have much faith in the wisdom of tunneling over to see the idiotic nerd buried in Wing D.

 

Cas lay still and daydreamed about strong fingers running through his hair and long trips to Mordor.

 

A clump of sod popped out of somewhere in the darkness and hit Cas in the mouth.  He spluttered.  A small cascade of dirt was rolling onto him now, and it didn’t sound as if it was simply the result of shifting.  He continued to hear pebbles drop.

 

“Hello?”

 

A pinprick of light danced in front of him and he blinked, thinking it was perhaps just the result of some dust in the eye.  It was gone.  But the sound of moving dirt stayed constant, and the clunking of mechanics could be heard now as well, albeit muffled.  Cas sucked in a quick breath and pulled himself slowly away from the wall of dirt, being careful not to press his hand into any torn metal or glass debris that might be littering the floor.

 

“Cas!”

 

He sat bolt upright.  Dean’s voice was distant but not imagined.  Dean was making the noises.  Dean was somehow getting closer to Cas.

 

“Hello! Dean?  Dean can you hear me?”

 

The clunking stopped.

 

“Cas, I can hear you!”

 

“Dean, what are you doing?  You should get back!  There could be further cave-ins!”

 

“Hey, Cas!  Shut the fuck up!"

 

The mechanical sounds started again and Cas stared at the sound, seeing nothing.  He was giddy with excitement and worry as he listened to Dean do who-knows-what on the other side of the blockage.  Suddenly a circle of light appeared in front of him, about three inches in diameter.  The light pinwheeled as if it was turning, and Cas watched, realizing finally that Dean had rigged up an auger of sorts inside a long pvc pipe which had effectively tunneled through the mountain.  

 

"Am I all the way through?"

 

Cas reached towards the circle of light and felt around the end of the pipe.  It seemed to clear the edge of the rubble by almost a foot.  He shouted as much back to Dean.  Satisfied, Dean slid the auger blade out of the pipe.  They were left with about 6 feet of empty pipe between them.

 

"Hey there."  Dean presumably put his eye up to the hole to peer at Cas, but his head eclipsed the light and he could see nothing.  Cas gazed down the tube at a constantly moving silhouette of Dean's head.  

 

"Hello, Dean."

 

"No light over there?"

 

"No.  No power at all."

 

"Jesus, what happened?  I thought this place is supposed to last forever."

 

Cas blushed in the dark, then slowly lowered his mouth to the opening so that at least he might be spared having to yell his explanation.

 

"I overrode all of this wing's reporting features about two weeks ago. If i hadn't done that it's likely this could have been anticipated and we would have received proper notice."

 

"Now why the hell would you do that?"

 

Cas had a wall of dirt to protect him, but he couldn't help feeling naked anyway.

 

"I did not want any data I collected on you or myself to be backed up in the central system and utilized for future team research."

 

Dean got deja vu as he was hit with the same little rush of pride he had felt when he had gotten Cas to admit he would miss him.  He considered what to project down the tube next.

 

"Thanks, Cas.  But now I'm thinking it would have been a lot safer if I had just agreed to be an experiment."

 

"Oh you were." Dean barely picked up Cas's uncomfortable chuckle.  "But the results wouldn't have benefitted science in any way.  I was just being selfish."

 

Dean stood up and grinned, thinking of Cas and his good touches, porn and cuddling.  His face warmed.

 

"Yeah well.  I may have been doing some experimenting of my own."

 

"Because I'm a man?"

 

Dean stared at his end of the pipe.

 

"Yes.  And no.  Nice to know you don't pull any punches when there's absolutely no possibility of eye contact."

 

"It must be the adrenalin.". He coughed. "Dean, I don't want you to leave, but I would really like a water.  And a flashlight may be a good idea also."

 

Dean pushed a bottle of water and a flashlight through the pipe with a thin metal rod.

 

"Oh. That was fast.  Snack?"

 

A tube of peanuts came through next, and Cas opened them eagerly, sitting cross legged in front of the pipe with the flashlight in front of him, mimicking a campfire.

 

“I’d roll an apple through, but there’s a bunch of dirt in the pipe.”

 

“It’s alright.  Thanks.”

 

Cas munched on his nuts in the dark and examined the panic lurking in his chest.  Normally he could wander off to his office and be happily alone and busy for days at a time, though further examination revealed that Dean tended to be a pretty strong presence the whole time, via the video monitor.  Now he sat staring at the tube of light, desperate for conversation topics that would keep Dean talking, a constant reminder that he was there.  Dean came up with more to say, first.

 

“How is taking an entire wing offline even an option?”

 

“I’m not sure what protocol it’s based on, but it’s available in every room.  It’s a manual control lever.”

 

“Why do we even have that lever?”

 

Beat.

 

“Dean, if that is a reference to something, I do not understand it.” He paused, long enough to sigh. “I am going to miss you very much. And your references.”

 

“Cas, no one's going anywhere.”

 

Cas laughed, a bitter and scratchy guffaw.

 

“That would actually be the worst possible outcome.”

 

“Shut up.  You know what I mean!”

 

Cas leaned his forehead against a surprisingly smooth rock. It was cool, and temporarily eased the heat and intensity of his headache.

 

“Why am I even here?  I think I’m in the midst of some kind of crisis of faith.”  His voice sounded odd, undecided as to whether he was trying to project the sound to Dean, or simply talking to himself.

 

“Hey, man.  Don’t get all existential on me.  I mean - this place - it’s just your job, five days a week.  I need you to keep it together.  We’re so close to getting out of here.  I need you.  I need you to keep us on track until the cavalry busts in.”

 

Dean, Cas realized, felt as trapped and alone on his side of the cave-in as Cas did, despite the added benefits of light, food, water, toilets, etc.

 

“Did you just quote Elton John to me?”

 

“DAMNIT, CAS.  You’re oblivious to 99% of pop culture and the one thing you manage to absorb is Elton John?”

 

“Gabriel took me to see him in Las Vegas.  He played and sang for three hours.  He is an amazing and dedicated performer.”  Cas coughed as some dust tickled his throat.  “I can relate to that song.”

 

“Please don’t waste your energy extolling the virtues of Rocket Man.  Just take it easy.”

 

“Sure. I’ll just kick back and relax.”

 

Dean made a snide face at the tube, for no one’s benefit.

 

“So you’ve just been sitting on your sarcasm this whole time, waiting for an emergency?”

 

“I’m not-” Cas struggled to keep his stress from making him snappy.  “This is not fun.  And you can be a very frustrating man.”

 

“Bullshit.  I’m pleasant as fuck.  Give me one good example.”

 

Silence.

 

“Your name has no potential to be shortened into a friendly nickname.”

 

“Like ‘Cas’?  And that bothers you?”

 

“A bit.”

 

“Some people have called me Dean-o.”

 

“That’s impractical.  It’s longer than your given name.  And ridiculous.  These people are your friends?”

 

“Nah. At least, not when they’re calling me that.”

 

“Winchester also does not shorten well, and is far too impersonal in its entirety.”

 

“You’ve really given this a lot of thought.”  Dean doesn’t sound impressed.

 

“I’ve recently had a great deal of extra time on my hands in which to think.”

 

"Yeah. What else have you been thinking about with that giant brain of yours?"

 

There was a pause that went unexplained as the seconds ticked by.  Dean's chest got heavy with the realization that Cas was thinking too hard about his answer.  They were close to some kind of fittingly bizarre ending, and Dean had been fighting with himself to keep things light whenever he felt any uncomfortable feelings rear up. But now he couldn't squash the subject matter with a firm look, and he couldn't walk away and leave Cas all alone on the other side of the dirt.  He gritted his teeth and waited patiently to hear what Cas was so hesitant to share with him.

 

“I have been thinking about love.  I had previously downplayed all forms of emotional attachment or attraction and attributed them to chemistry.  Biology.  Exposure.  Human nature.”  Cas was speaking quickly, his voice cracking as he raised it to an unnaturally loud volume in order to send it clearly through the pipe.  “But when faced with an impending loss of contact, emotional or physical, the prudent response would be to cut oneself off, or wean oneself carefully off the offending contact.”

 

Cas breathed in and Dean waited, having followed Cas’s logic pretty closely, though he might not have agreed with it.

 

“And I believe that an unwillingness to cut oneself off from a relationship that is guaranteed to end in mutual abandonment possibly indicates an attachment that transcends chemical responses.  I’ve theorized that this might be genuine affection.  I don’t think I’ve experienced that at this level before, and that in itself is incredibly depressing.”

 

“Cas.” Dean’s voice was a little urgent.  “People don’t live life following their Darwinian instincts.  They don’t protect themselves from every possible loss by shutting down completely.  We eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.  I do it.  A lot of people do.  Damn near everyone.”

 

“If that were true, I’d like to think you would have been more persistent in pursuing a physical relationship.”

 

“Cas, we definitely have a physical relationship.  You started it with your good-touch bullshit.  And I… beefed it up.”

 

“Fine. A sexual relationship.”

 

Dean sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the 3” pipe, blushing furiously.  He ducked down to rub his forehead.

 

“You said you didn’t want that and I respect you.  I can control myself.  I’m not an animal.  I’m not sensitive about it, but you are, so it was off the table.  No big deal.  I mean, it was a big deal.  Not a BIG deal.  What I’m saying is -”

 

Dean squeezed his eyes shut and began gesturing, for his own benefit.

 

“You were attractive enough BEFORE science apparently kicked in and FORCED me to want you, so it was disappointing.”

 

Cas smiled.  He hadn’t been fishing for compliments, but they warmed him in a much more wholesome way than his embarrassment had.  He thought about Dean’s words, and his apocalyptic philosophy of life and love.

 

“So you have pursued brief, seemingly meaningless relationships with individuals that you could have potentially loved?  You have embraced the surety of heartache in exchange for a limited term of connection?”

 

Dean bit his lip as he stared into his memory at the emotional emptiness of his complex sexual history.  His conquests could have been considered good friends at best, strangers at worst.  Attractive people gladly offering up pleasure in exchange for pleasure.  He thought about the last woman he had genuinely missed, but there wasn’t one.  The sentiment of loss was easily replaced by the the excitement for the next possibility.  When it came to sex, Dean was an optimist, firmly believing each encounter would be better than the last, or at least have something new and interesting to offer.

 

“No.  I haven’t done that.  I don’t run into a lot of people who are desperate to settle down.  It’s mutual.  We’re all having fun.  Nobody is serious.  It’s safe.  You don’t fall in love with people like that.  That’s why I couldn’t do it to you.  You’re not that kind of person.”

 

“It’s not like I’m some old maid pining for a husband.”  Cas scoffed.  He thought he heard Dean huff out a laugh.

 

“There was one time,” Dean started, ignoring Cas’s annoyance, “I was with a woman for a while.  She had a kid, Ben, and he liked me and she was hot as hell so I stuck around way longer than usual.  I’d come back to them when I could.  She was nice and she was gorgeous and great in the sack but - everyone I bang is hot, and nice enough.  I think I was coming back more for her kid.  I miss him.  I stopped going back so that she could get a real boyfriend.  Something permanent.  He’d follow me around and ask me how much I liked his mom and if I could move close by and I couldn’t string him along anymore.”

 

Cas considered his response carefully.

 

“You cared for him and you let him go for selfless reasons.  Hopefully his life has more stability now.  Even if it does and he is happy, I’m sure he still misses you.”  Cas dug his fingers into the dirt, enjoying the coolness, his body fidgety due to the unprecedented amount of verbal communication.  “You are a loner and you purposefully only associate with people who have emotional expectations as low as your own.  You fell into a relationship with Ben accidentally, and you closed yourself off to it when you realized it would cause you both some emotional pain.  You only allow yourself to unconditionally love your brother.  The rest of your lasting relationships are a result of your job, and you are comfortable with them because you are consenting to be used for your purpose, and nothing more.  You and I are not as different as you think.”

 

Dean looked into the darkness of the pipe, wishing he could make eye contact.  He could picture Cas’s eyes easily enough, but he missed the easy exchange of looks.  Verbalizing every nuance of his answers had been tiring.

 

“So what are you saying, Cas?  You think you love me?”  He tried to hide the disdain in his voice, but it bled through.  No one but Sam was allowed to love him.  Brothers were safe.  Ben’s attachment had been unfortunate, and he questioned how well the kid even knew him.  Cas had said that it was science.  Cas was supposed to be objective.  Two hot, open-minded guys, trapped for weeks with nothing to do - Cas had chalked it up to exposure.  He wasn’t allowed to take it back and call it something else, even if it did make Dean bite down hard on a smile that refused to be buried..  

 

“I - I will be very sad when you go.  And I will remember this incident very fondly, but also with many regrets.”  The melancholy in his voice was the base to Dean’s acid.

 

“Cas, Goddamnit, for the LAST time I’m not going anywhere!”

 

“Don’t go making promises you can’t keep, Cowboy.”  A new voice spoke up behind Dean.  

 

A new voice.

 

Dean whipped around and stood up before his conscious brain was fully online with the “new voice” information.  A short, brown-haired man stood a few feet down the hall, dressed in an orange jumpsuit of sorts, covered with dirt and armed with a backpack respirator which was hanging loosely around his neck, unused.

 

_Hello, Dean.  I have an update.  The main Entrance located in Wing A has been opened, the lock being manually overridden by the master security code.  There are currently three additional visitors in Bunker 41, two of them in the kitchen, and one of them in Wing D._

 

“NO. FUCKING. SHIT. HAL.”  Dean squinted and sent a beam of hate to the nearest corner camera.  Being angry helped him forget that his heart was racing and his knees felt weak.

 

“HAL?  HAL9000?  Holy crap, did Cas let you name the computer?”

 

Cas had his ear pressed tightly to the pipe, frantically trying to figure out who had startled Dean and what was going to happen next.  He heard the very distant tone of a familiar voice, though it took him a moment to place it in this context.

 

“Gabriel?”  He breathed.

 

“Who the fuck are you?” Dean asked, in a startlingly hostile tone.

 

“Hi, I’m Gabriel.  Here to rescue you.  You could sound a little more excited to see me, but we’ll work on that.  Where the hell is my little brother.”

 

“YOU’RE Gabriel?”  Dean processed.  “Ha.  I told Cas you were CIA.”

 

Gabriel gave him an incredulous smarm face.

 

“Like he didn’t know.”

 

Dean bristled.  Cas wasn’t stupid.  He was trusting, and distracted with the guilt he felt over keeping his own secret from his brother.  Dean opened his mouth to say as much before he was interrupted.

 

“Hello?”  Cas’s voice came howling through the pipe, though it sounded hollow like a distant radio by the time it reached their end.

 

“Cas?  What the hell did you do to my brother?”  Gabriel power-walked over to the pipe in the dirt and peered through it.  “Little brother?  You okay?  Do I need to get medical help?”

 

“I’m fine, Gabriel.  Just sore, and in the dark.  Dean didn’t do anything.  This is my fault.”

 

“Nonsense.  You didn’t know what you were doing.  I’m just going to go ahead and blame this Winchester guy’s rugged good looks for this-” he gestured at the cave-in “seemingly impossible circumstance.  I know shit like this doesn’t happen unless you take systems offline.  What were you trying to hide, little bro?”

 

“I’m uncomfortable with the fact that you know anything about my job.  Just get me out of here Gabriel.  And leave Dean alone.”

 

Dean watched Gabriel bounce through the conversation with his brother.  The man was about as subtle as the Puerto Rican Pride Parade.  He was not your typical secret agent material.  Cas’s obliviousness was even more warranted, as far as Dean was concerned.

 

“What are you calling dibs?  Unnecessary.  I’ve been strictly women for like… a while now.”

 

Cas let his head fall into his hands, thankful that he was well hidden, but increasingly panic stricken at the thought of being left alone on his side of the wall.  Gabriel continued as if he could read Cas’s mind.

 

“Alright, Dean-o.  Let’s get you out of here.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“C’mon, don’t you want to go topside?  We’ve got to give you a once-over before we debrief you and set you free.  And we’ve got to get a bunch of equipment in here to dig Cas out.  You’ll be in the way.”

 

Dean shifted, uncomfortably, giving Gabriel a suspicious glare.  

 

“What are you going to do to get him out?”

 

Gabriel glances at the floor, seeing the auger blade and other tools that Dean had dragged over and left strewn around the floor once he made contact with Cas.

 

“Basically this,” he answered, pointing at the tube, “but bigger.”  He made a big circle with his hands, waving a lollipop that had seemingly materialized out of nowhere.

 

“I can’t just wait around to make sure he’s okay?”  Dean asked, quietly.  Gabriel cocked his head and gave Dean what could now be referred to as the Novak family squint, though it was much briefer and less penetrating than Cas’s.

 

“Cas’ll be fine.  We’re professionals.  And geniuses.  You’ve been down here for three weeks.  Don’t you want to go upstairs and remember what the sun looks like?”

 

Dean is saved from answering by the hollow voice of his friend.

 

“Dean, go.  It’s fine.  I’ll be fine.”

 

Dean furrowed his brow and breathed in a quick sniff.  Gabriel was eyeing him again, and it made it harder to lean down and address Cas through the tube.

 

“Okay, man.  If you’re sure.  I’ll see you in debriefing.  Alright?”

 

“Yes, Dean.”

 

Dean bit his lip.  Gabriel’s stare didn’t waver, and it was becoming malicious.  It made Dean feel like he had just kissed his prom date goodnight in front of her father.

 

“I’m just going to go grab my stuff out of my room.”

 

Gabe stepped sideways, not blocking his path, but making him opt to stop instead of brushing up against him through the narrow gap.

 

“Gee.  Two guys, three weeks, alone in this dump.  You’re a beautiful man.  I would have pitied the poor soul in charge of cleaning the sheets around here if you were gay.”

 

“I am what I am.”  Dean shot back, his voice low.  “But no, I didn’t exchange fluids with your brother, if that’s what you're trying to ask.”  

 

He pushed by Gabriel without urgency, trying to decipher the brief glint of surprise that passed over his otherwise well-schooled expression.  Once he was past he turned to meet Gabriel’s eyes again.

 

“But you’re right about one thing, the sheets are filthy.”  He threw out a dashing grin and walked casually away.  He was excited but he wasn’t in a hurry.  Cas was still stuck in the dark.  He didn’t want to just run out of there.  Granted, he could finally get out and call Sam and ask about his car and get new orders and find out whether the attack meant anything or whether this whole ordeal had been some random product of chance.

 

He slowed as he reached his door.  It opened for him with the familiar hiss and click.

 

“Thanks, HAL.”

  
  



	7. No End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you expecting a candygram?”
> 
> “Ha ha. Answer your door.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's over. It's over. I did it. I did it.  
> Feelings, people. I have them. They are strong.  
> I'd like to thank anyone who commented.  
> I'd like to imagine there's a bunch of people who don't read WIP's who will now read this little baby-o-mine, and I'd like to thank them, preemptively.  
> Thanks for the kudos, you non-commentors, you. I should totally talk. I don't ever comment.  
> I'm mysuperouatfeels.tumblr.com, if you're wondering. I fic rec a lot there.  
> I love you all.  
> I'm having trouble letting go.  
> I'm working on a gym fic that's even MORE lighthearted than this... so. Hope that comes along.  
> Okay bye.
> 
> For real.
> 
> Later.

**[Day 21]**

 

Dean had been debriefed.  Cas was still buried.  Dean had showered.  Cas was still buried.  Dean had changed into the fatigues he was wearing on day one, and was trying to get access to the Bunker to see the progress they were making towards getting Cas out, but Gabriel materialized in his path..

 

“What are you doing here?  Shouldn't you be watching them?  What if there’s another cave-in?”

 

“Relax, Dean-o.  Cas is clear of the excavation, and we’ve got a team of engineers monitoring the whole ordeal.  Real question is, what are YOU doing here?”

 

“I’m making sure he’s okay.  You’re dad must have really fucked you two up if you have that much trouble grasping the concept of friendship.”

 

Gabriel stiffened at the mention of his father, his eyes darting around to inventory anyone in the vicinity who might have heard Dean’s comment.

 

“Watch it, Winchester.  You can act like this is all just part of your bro code, but I’m not buying it.  You’re messing with my little brother.  You’re fucking with his head.  He’s down there being all weepy because he thinks you’re gone, and it’s better that way.”

 

“Why does he think I’m gone?”

 

“Because I told him you were.  Like a band-aid.  Rip.”  Gabriel mimics tearing an adhesive off of the back of his hand.  “He’s been through a pretty trying ordeal, you know.  The explosion - the lock-down - honestly, man, I have to say I don’t know how you come out of shit like that seeming so… okay.”  But Cas isn’t like you.”

 

“He’s way stronger than you give him credit.  He’s all science and statistics.  He’s been rock solid this whole time.”

 

“I’m sure that’s what he’d like you to think.”

 

Dean stepped into Gabriel’s personal space, angrily.

 

“I know it.  You don’t know.  You have no idea.  You don’t even know your own brother well enough to know he believed you when you told him you owned a candy store.  Cas likes facts.  He likes to be able to trust what he sees and what he hears.  You sit around lying to him about your life - you tell him I’m gone.  He’s not a fucking kid.  What do you think you’re saving him from?”

 

“My occupation is a secret that no amount of blood is supposed to break.  It’s not my fault he never read between the lines.”  Gabriel hissed.  “But right now I’m saving him from you.  This is it.  This is the end of the line.  There’s a gentleman behind us waiting to give you your orders and then you’re outta here.  Cas is already despondent.  He is so careful.  It takes years for him to let people get close to him.  No one even bothers.  Then he had Dean Winchester for three weeks straight.  And he conveniently deactivated all record keeping video and audio for two of those weeks.  I’ve got 21 days of greenhouse footage.  That’s it.  What am I supposed to think about that?  You think I’m stupid?  You think I’m going to waltz you back down there so that you can remind him you’re leaving again?”

 

Dean looked behind him, and sure enough there was a messenger standing at attention with an envelope emblazoned with a familiar “TOP SECRET”.  He clenched his teeth together and turned back to Gabriel with a sigh.

 

“Look.”  He couldn’t hold eye contact, and opted to stare at the wall to the left of Gabriel’s head.  “Eight touches.”  His voice trailed off.

 

“Excuse me?”  Gabriel snapped.

 

“Cas needs eight good touches a day.  Probably not right after he gets out.  Next week.  And after that.  They’re supposed to keep him emotionally stable.  If you can’t do it then maybe get him a cat or something.

 

Gabriel fixed Dean with another stare of confusion, but this one was softer.

 

“And tell him I had to go do super important top secret stuff and I didn’t have a choice.  I just disappeared.  Tell him I disappeared.  Don’t tell him I asked about him.”

 

Dean turned on his heel and stepped up to the messenger, who turned crisply and led Dean away.  

 

Gabriel sighed and turned back towards the entrance to Bunker 41.  He reached up to hold down on the microphone button attached to his earpiece/mic combo.  

 

“Hey, little brother.  How’s it hanging?”

 

Cas’s voice crackled back into his ear.

 

“I’m doing fine, Gabriel.  I’d like to bathe.  I’d really like to use the bathroom.  I was considering peeing into the dirt pile.  Is that wrong?”

 

“You’ve probably got another 20 minutes or so before they come bursting through.  Pee away.”

 

“Over and out.”  Cas shot back.  Gabriel laughed.

 

“Wait.  Cas?  I’ve gotta… You there?  Are you peeing yet?”

 

“I’m here.  What is it?”

 

“I just wanted to let you know that, uh.  Dean tried to stay.  He was going to wait for you.  He put up a pretty big fight when they came and got him, so… I didn’t want you to think he just ran out of here first chance he got.”

 

There was a silence on the line, and Gabriel wondered if he’d made a bad choice.

 

“Thanks, Gabriel.  I figured as much, but it’s nice to hear.”

 

The conversation didn’t feel over, but there was another pregnant pause.

 

“You okay, little brother?”

 

“I’m fine, thank you.  I didn’t have an misconceptions about how this would end, you know.  I know you probably think I got all wrapped up and in my head about it, and I did to a degree.  But I understood the end.  Probably better than Dean did.”

 

Gabriel sighed to himself, not pushing his mic to share his breath with Cas.  

 

“You’re probably right about that.  I’ll see you in a little while.  Over and out.”

 

**[Day 30]**

 

“Wait a second.  Cas is a GUY?”

 

Dean was sitting next to a fire with his oversized little brother.  They were clad in flannel and cargo pants, drinking beer and watching the flames, catching up after more than a month of silence between them.  Empty bottles littered the ground, and they were just finishing a twelve-pack between them.

 

“Uh, yeah.  Cas is a dude.”  Dean stared pointedly at the fire, knowing his cheeks were pink from the heat and not from being called out by his little brother.

 

“So you have a crush on a guy?  I’m not gonna lie, Dean.  That’s kind of weird.  A little awesome, but also weird.”

 

“When did I say I had a crush on him?”  He sputtered, defensively.

 

“Firstly, that’s not denial.  Secondly, you started this story by announcing that you’ve been trapped in a secret underground lab with a hot scientist for the past month.”

 

“I can objectively tell you when people are good looking.  Just like I can objectively say you’re a sasquatch. It’s a simple fact.  This guy could model for Calvin Klein.  Not your typical scientist type.”

 

“Right.  Still no denial.  Then it was all ‘Cas this’ and ‘Cas that’ and ‘I cooked for Cas’ and ‘Cas always beats me when we spar’ and ‘Cas and I had a Sean Astin marathon’ and ‘Cas and I drank good scotch and wine’.”

 

“ALRIGHT.  I still don’t remember telling you I had a crush on him.”

 

A weird smile spread on Sam’s face, which was also red from firelight or just the excitement of making his brother squirm, and the thrill of brotherly bonding in general.

 

“I guess I just always thought that the person who whipped you would be a girl.  It’s kind of offensive, actually.  You like sleeping with them well enough.  Do you have a problem with women, Dean?  Is it a sexist thing?”

 

“Fuck you. I’d want to fuck Cas just as much if he were a chick.”

 

Sam smirked.

 

“DAMNIT.”  Dean chucked his empty bottle into the weeds, angry he had been betrayed by such a weak beverage.

 

Now that he had won, Sammy put on his brotherly love face in an attempt to diffuse Dean’s wrath.

 

“So when are you going to see him again?”

 

“Never.”  Dean threw a bottle cap into the fire.  “He’s a nice guy.  He needs stability.  He needs someone to be there for him for a long time.  Like, forever.”

 

Sam frowned with a concerned expression.

 

“So do you, Dean.”  Dean didn’t answer.  He let the crackling of the fire fill his ears until it was a hot roar that he could feel more than he could hear.

  
  


**[Day 40]**

 

“Knock, knock, knock.  Hug patrol.  Open up.”

 

Cas rolled his eyes and looked at his door, groggily.  He knew from a lifetime of experience that Gabriel was not going anywhere.  He rolled himself gracelessly off the couch and pulled himself over to the door, unlatching the locks slowly and deliberately.

 

Gabriel bounded in and gave him a bear hug, picking his feet up off the ground.

 

“Is this really necessary?  What exactly is the occasion?”

 

“Do I need a reason to pop-in on my little bro, now?  I was just in the area.  Thought I’d stop by.”

 

“And assault me?”

 

“Need to keep up on your eight good touches.”

 

Cas’s eyes sharpened and a small smirk played on his lips.

 

“Where did you hear about good touches?”

 

Gabriel didn’t work too hard to hide the fact that he’d been caught with some privileged information.  He looked around the apartment with a guilty squint.

 

“A little bird told me?”

 

Cas smiled a private smile and walked over to his laptop, open on the coffee table in front of the couch.  He pulled out a USB flash drive and brought it over to Gabriel, dropping it in his hand.

 

“What’s this?”

 

“It’s Bunker 41, weeks 2 and 3.  All of it.”

 

“What do you want me to do with it?”

 

“Let your conscience be your guide.  But I’m getting rid of it.  Normal people can’t peruse their memories as if they’re video surveillance.  I’m letting go.  I’d like to be normal.”

 

Gabriel looked at the little black drive in his hand.  Part of him burned with curiosity.  What would the Dean and Cas show be like?  Was it all angst and yelling and sexual tension or awkward fumbling?  Lights on or lights off?  Scheduled?  Spontaneous?

 

“I’m going to destroy it.”  He decided, as the words came out of his mouth.  

 

“Thank you, Gabriel.”  

 

Cas stepped forward and gave him a genuine hug.

 

“Only six more to go.”

  
  
  


**[Day 81]**

 

Gabriel sat at Cas’s kitchen table, slathering a stack of pancakes in Hershey’s syrup.  Cas watched, bemused.

 

“You know that’s Hershey’s syrup, right?”

 

“Yes, unfortunately.  You’re such a goddamned philistine.  But unless you’ve got Godiva stashed somewhere, I’m out of better options.  Is a Slikepott fudge too much to ask for?”  He shoveled a chocolatey mess into his mouth.

 

“And you wonder why I believed that you were a chocolatier.”

 

“I AM a chocolatier.  I am a jack of all trades.”

 

“Yeah. And I’m a college librarian.”

 

“The fact that you are no longer lying about that is disturbing.  C’mon, little bro.  Why don’t you go see that therapist I was telling you about.  You need to get back out there and grab some life, by the balls.  You need to grab the balls of life.”  He gestured.  Cas looked away, purposefully, then let his eyes lose focus entirely.

 

“Therapists only help you talk yourself out of things.”

 

“Yeah.  So?”

 

Cas looked at his brother, earnestly.

 

“Talking myself out of things is all I’ve ever done.  I don’t want to be talked out of this thing.  I want to keep it.  It’s mine.”

 

Gabriel gave Cas a wistful smile and patted him on the shoulder.

 

There was a knock on the door.  Cas looked at Gabriel questioningly, then furrowed his brow.

 

“Are you expecting a candygram?”

 

“Ha ha.  Answer your door.”

 

Cas strode over and pulled his door open without checking the peephole.  He found himself face to face with a very trim and tan Dean Winchester.  Cas’s brain managed to wrangle enough blood for a genuine grin before his heart took a vacation into his stomach.  Dean returned the expression.

 

“Hey, Cas.”

 

“Hello, Dean.”

 

Dean’s eyes flicked to Gabriel, and his hand reached out for a moment, then darted up to rub his neck.  His eyes roamed Cas’s kitchen floor until he seemed to steel himself to his mission.  Cas continued to stare, one hand on his door knob.

 

“I’m working in the area so I thought I’d come by and see if you wanted to go get dinner tonight, maybe watch a movie?”  His eyes were imploring.  “I’ve been driving for three days straight, so I’m way behind on my good touches.”  Dean reached a hand out to punch Cas lightly in the shoulder, but he couldn’t quite school the longing out of his playful expression.

 

Gabriel pretended not to crane his neck to better hear their low conversation.  He also stopped chewing, opting instead to softly sip at his hot cocoa.

 

“You are interested in taking me on a dinner date, then cuddling with me while we watch a film?”

 

Dean nodded, disregarding the gentle blush that was creeping up his neck.

 

“Basically.”

 

Cas breathed in slowly and gave Dean his signature squint.  He tried pull some of his thoughts into the look and send them Dean’s way, but choosing became a muddled affair, and he ended up sending over a hard line of:  What took you so long?  My god, you look amazing.  Do you realize I am a grown man with grown-up man needs?  There is not enough porn in Nevada to get me over seeing you in my doorway.  

 

In response, Dean’s perfect face did very little to hide the fact that he was at that moment a delicate flower that had needed to reconnect so badly that he’d managed to suppress a lifetime’s worth of fear-of-rejection on the off-chance that Cas would let him in, even if it was just this one time.

 

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to fuck me, first.”  Cas smiled as if he’d just asked for the time.

 

Hot chocolate sprayed over the breakfast table, half of which Gabriel immediately inhaled in shock.  Cas continued to smile, his eyes never leaving Dean’s as his brother clutched at his throat in the background.  Dean’s jaw flexed.  They were above ground.  They had an audience.  They’d spent two months apart.  Yet as soon as his orders had mentioned Nevada he had found himself drawn to Cas’s door with a magnetic pull, that had him more and more frenzied the closer he got.  He threw out a quick, silent thanks to god or whoever put the beautiful and horizon-broadening hermaphroditic alien in his path just a short year ago.  It was time at last to pop his bisexual cherry (with a human), though he suspected that 30 or so hours of full-contact cuddling had worn away a great deal of it already.

 

Cas was wearing a loose flannel over a fitted tee shirt.  Dean reached out and pulled two handfuls of Cas’s flannel, simultaneously pushing his knuckles against Cas’s chest to back them at an angle into the nearest wall.  

 

“C’mere you big twinkie.”  He mumbled, staring at Cas’s lips before his eyes flicked up to meet Cas’s, then blinked shut in anticipation.  Cas leaned forward and met Dean’s lips, momentarily forgetting his hands, then catching up when he found them reaching out to grip Dean’s waist on their own accord.  Dean responded by sliding a hand behind Cas’s neck, locking him as close as possible.

 

“I’m just going to go…” Gabriel looked around for something to say. “To go eat this outside.  On a bench.  And feed the birds.  Maybe grab a latte.  There’s a nice library on the corner.”  He picked up his cocoa-splattered breakfast and sidestepped out the door.  Dean acknowledged his exit by pulling Cas out of range of the door and slamming it shut with his foot.

 

The two men groped each other, hands jostling wrists as they reached out to dig into hip bones and love handles.

 

“Cas,” Dean breathed his name against his mouth, with his eyes closed. “I couldn’t do it.  You broke me.  I didn’t want that to be the end.”

 

Cas was nibbling on Dean’s neck, but he brought his head upright to speak into the nook behind Dean’s ear.

 

“This will be a much more rewarding finish.”

 

“No.”  Dean said sharply.  His fingers had been ghosting over Cas’s abs, and he pushed back on him suddenly, shoving his arched back back into the wall.  His mouth found Cas’s once more, grazing his lips.

 

“No, man.  I'm not finished.  No end.”

 

Cas’s half-lidded eyes sharpened immediately, and he grabbed one of Dean’s wrists, stilling the wandering hand.  His head fell to the side in the motion that had become so familiar to Dean.  This time Dean took advantage, mouthing the newly exposed skin.  Cas watched, and allowed it but he didn’t participate.

 

“I slept with Balthazar,”  he said, slowly, “when we discovered we had both survived.  It was very emotional and we… got carried away.”  His words were stilted and intentional and he felt Dean react as much as he watched it, feeling the spasm in his hand and the stiffening of his back as he jerked his head back to stare Cas in the eyes.

 

“Really?”  Hurt and surprise poured out of his gaze, plain as day if only for a moment.  “That’s - your thing.  Not my business.  Unless… Are you together?”

 

Cas let out a sigh full of so much tension that his knees nearly gave way.

 

“No, not at all. I lied.  I did not sleep with Balthazar.  I just needed to see your reaction.  I’m sorry.”  He reached up and ran his fingers through Dean’s hair, massaging his scalp the way he had on the couch of the Bunker.

 

“Damnit, Cas!”  Dean spat, though his stilled hand had freed itself and was travelling up to the back of Cas’s neck, rubbing small circles with his index finger.  “I told you I’m not a fucking experiment.”

 

The venom in Dean’s voice was not reflected in his touch, but Cas thought it wise to address, regardless.  He recaptured both Dean’s wrists and swung him around, tripping him backwards onto the couch, landing his knee between Dean’s legs and moving one hand to pin his shoulder while the other hand threaded their fingers together as if it had a mind of its own.

 

“I don’t hear from you for two months and you show up talking about how this doesn’t have to end.  Do you know what things that don’t end are, Dean?  They are forever.  I need to know if you are serious, or if you are just trying to seduce me.”

 

Dean looked up at Cas, sheepishly.  He reached his hand up and caressed Cas’s cheek with his thumb.  Cas closed his eyes.

 

“Look at me, Cas. I know what forever means.  It’s scientifically impossible.  So I lied.  There’s an end.  You’re gonna get sick of me, or you’re going to die.  That’s it.  Otherwise you’re stuck here.  With me.”

 

Cas opened his eyes to stare at Dean, then attacked his mouth with a renewed fervor.  Dean ground his hips forward into Cas’s knee and they swallowed each other’s moans.

  
  


**[Day 82]**

Dean and Cas were entwined on Cas’s couch again, after successfully taking their relations off the couch and into to the bedroom for almost half the night before.  Dean had asked to make breakfast, for old time’s sake, and after 14 hours they had finally found time to watch a movie.  Dean’s head was cradled in Cas’s lap, and he drew swirling patterns on Cas’s thigh as Cas ran his fingers through his recently trimmed hair.

 

Dean’s phone buzzed on the coffee table.  He reached out to check his texts

 

“Hey, Cas?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You’re really a college librarian now?”

 

“For the time being, yes.  Gabriel has encouraged me to take on more demanding work, but I am not sure what direction I’d like to go in.”

 

“Huh.”

 

“Why?”

 

Dean put his phone back on the table and rolled off his side, onto his back.  He threaded his fingers together over his chest and gazed up at Cas’s chin.

 

“What do you know about ghosts?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> If you enjoyed this mostly PG slash, then perhaps you should check out The Big Store.
> 
> **for serious, y'all- it cuts me deep that no one wants to take a chance on a Marx Brothers tribute. There's real pain there, and it stings**


End file.
